


(Sherlock X Reader) A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words

by LVE32



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Adorable, Art, Best Friends, Bottom Sherlock Holmes, Cute, Cute Ending, Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Life at 221B Baker Street, Drawing, Establishing Relationship, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Feel-good, Feels, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Gentle Kissing, Greg Lestrade & Sherlock Holmes Friendship, Hand Jobs, Life Drawing, Loneliness, Lonely Sherlock, Loss of Virginity, Love Confessions, Male-Female Friendship, Mutual Pining, Mycroft Being Mycroft, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Nude Modeling, Pining, Pining Sherlock Holmes, Pre-Relationship, Protective Big Brother Mycroft, Reader-Insert, Secret Crush, Secrets, Sherlock Has A Crush, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes Has a Heart, Sherlock is a Good Boyfriend, Smut, Sweet Sherlock, Vulnerable Sherlock, sherlock can draw, sherlock is an artist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:28:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25867435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LVE32/pseuds/LVE32
Summary: Sherlock can draw. Rather well, it turns out. Y/N didn't know about her friend's uncharacteristic hobby until she accidentally stumbled upon some of his sketches.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & Reader
Comments: 41
Kudos: 103





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Progressively gets smuttier as it goes along :-)

It is said that everyone, on average, has about seven secrets. Main secrets, genuine secrets, things they've never even uttered to a best friend or shamefully whispered to a partner.

This story is about a couple of Sherlock's secrets. What is the opposite of a secret? Whatever it is, three of Sherlock's became it on the same day, roughly ten minutes apart.

The word 'secret' brings to mind affairs, twisted kinks, embarrassing moments, and that one thing you don't ever want to think about. In contrast, the three of Sherlock's secrets that this story is about are innocently refreshing.

One of them is that he can draw. Rather well, it turns out. Not only can he draw, he enjoys it. Sketching calms him, and 'sketching' really is the best word to describe his style; quick, darting lines overlapping and overlapping and overlapping until a picture materialises from the chaos. Kind of like a metaphor for the way he sees the world. Why is that a secret? He'll explain later.

The second secret is that he's in love. I won't tell you with whom. You will probably be able to guess.

The third secret sort of intersects the previous two.

...

There are two kinds of people when it comes to keeping something hidden.

The first are very promising when they start off, and become even more promising with every close shave they encounter. Narrow escapes sharpen their caution and cause them to tuck their secret even closer to their bodies than before. Their secrets tend to remain that way until the day they die, and, often, even more days after that.

The second kind seems to go the opposite way. They buckle under the pressure and eventually get lazy. The grip on their secret loosens and loosens until they drop it, naked, for all the world to see. They almost beg for close shaves, for someone else to pry the secret from them so it at least looks like they put up some kind of fight.

There were three times in total that Y/N  _ almost _ unearthed Sherlock's secret, and one time that she did. The one time that she did occurred because he is very much the second kind of secret keeper.

The only way to become good at drawing is by doing it again and again and again and again, and then repeat those steps for many years. If you love to draw, which Sherlock does, this won't be seen as a chore. In fact, a lot of people draw because they love to draw, and are not even trying to become 'good'. They are then pleasantly surprised when 'goodness' seems to just happen; a pleasing byproduct of their hobby. Sherlock wasn't trying to become 'good' when he picked up a crayon as a toddler, a felt-tip as a child, a pencil as a teen, and (metaphorically) never put it down. He just...likes to draw.

The first time Y/N almost found out about his secret was because of this.

...

"You drink hot chocolate?" Y/N had asked, turning her face to give an inquisitive look at Sherlock who was walking next to her. He was watching a whirlpool of leaves skitter around their feet like brittle ghosts. He'd suggested they visit a cafe Y/N was surprised he knew about; He didn't seem the type to visit a place called the Pink Giraffe. It brought up mental images of lazy days meandering about the London sights, sugar-filled nibbles, and gaggles of friends. All things Sherlock had never really shown an interest in. Apart from the sugar-filled nibbles. Maybe that was why he wanted to go.

"Sometimes. We don't have to, it's just they make really good brownies---"

Of course.

"---and I just thought that because we're nearby---"

"Yeah, that sounds nice." It did sound nice. Anywhere indoors sounded nice. "I can't feel my fingers."

Sherlock moved his arm, the one hanging between them, and for a small second Y/N thought he was going to take her hand.

But he didn't, instead he drew his wallet out from his pocket. It's made of black leather and looks like it's been beaten up. Literally, beaten up; as if it had gotten into a fight once and lost. He doesn't seem to have respect for it or its contents. On the very second day of Y/N having moved in with him, she'd mentioned she was going to go and buy groceries and he'd tossed it at her, along with the digits of his bank account's pin code. Y/N could have taken the plastic and the numbers and never returned. Maybe that was the idea; a test, of sorts. Obviously, she hadn't stolen anything because she's not that kind of person. And, frankly, this experience had only made her new roommate more intriguing. She didn't want to run away with his money, she wanted to stay and get to know him better. So she did. She'd split the shopping bill between them and brought Sherlock home a Cadbury's Marvellous Creations bar. He'd liked that a lot. If it  _ was _ a test she'd passed with flying colours.

"I'll buy if you order," Sherlock said, sounding pleased that she'd agreed to a snack. Home was too far away to make it there without one, but too close to call a cab without a lingering feeling of laziness. He was rifling through his wallet's contents and several notes peeked out from between the material. The sight of Her Majesty's shiny emblem reminded Y/N of the day the plastic five pound notes were introduced across England. She'd be lying if she said her and Sherlock hadn't spent several minutes holding one under the kitchen tap to see if they really  _ were  _ waterproof.

The cafe he'd suggested they visit was wedged between a bookstore and an apartment building. All three were made of smog-smudged bricks rounded with age, but the exterior of the Pink Giraffe had been cloaked in a thick, magenta spill of paint. 'Spill' is the only correct way of describing the decorator's process. They seemed to have stood on the roof and poured pigment down the cafe's face until it was completely swamped in liquid raspberry.

"Oh! I get it now!" Y/N exclaimed as they approached.

"Get what?"

"Why it's called the Pink Giraffe."

"Because the owner likes the colour pink, and giraffes?" Sherlock offered.

"No, because the building is tall and thin and pink."

"I think you're looking into it too much."

Sherlock held the door open for Y/N, the classically old-fashioned little bell making a delightful sound as if to welcome them. If it were a person, Y/N was sure it would be wearing a top hat that he would have tipped it at her.

Everything about the inside of the Pink Giraffe was warm. (You thought I was going to say 'pink', didn't you? Well, it's that too.) The air was rich and heavy with the tangy scent of roasted coffee beans, an old-fashioned open fireplace at the far end of the room flicked its flaming tongues, trying to taste it. Like the front of the building, the inside was also long and incredibly narrow, the deep wooden floor reaching off into the distance like a corridor rather than a room, cushy armchairs clustered around small tables placed in a crocodile line down one wall. The lights were just industrial-style bulbs hanging from the ceiling, the filaments naked and bare without lamp shades, glowing hot with embarrassment.

Y/N didn't know where to look first. Some of the bookshop next door's stock seemed to have crept through invisible cracks like spiders, stacks of paperback novels and heavy hardbacks having set up home on the various (and all unique) shelves that clung to the walls. Every meter or so, the paper that these walls were covered with changed into a totally new pattern, more zany and colourful than its predecessor. Framed pictures of---well, of everything, really---had been plastered at very much irregular intervals wherever there was space (and, often, where there was not) like extra stamps a child put on a letter to make extra sure it reached Santa before Christmas Eve. The entire establishment looked as if it had been designed by The Mad Hatter from Alice In Wonderland, if he'd been English and Victorian and had access to B and Q.

"I went here with my mum ages ago."

Y/N blinked a few times, having to search through the jungle of colours, patterns, and general chaos of the decor to find who'd spoken to her. It had been Sherlock, standing a little to her left, answering the question Y/N hadn't voiced but he knew she was thinking:  _ 'How did you know about this place?' _

"I was showing her around London and it started to rain so she suggested we go in here."

"Your mum seems cool."

He hummed, not really sure what to say to that. 'Cool' isn't exactly a word he'd use when describing Mrs Holmes, but, then again, name one son that _ does _ think his mum is cool. "I complained at the time, but I keep coming back anyway because---as I said---the brownies are good."

"Yeah, you mentioned. Hey, I think that seat is free, you should go get it before anyone nabs it."

Sherlock followed the line of Y/N's coat-covered arm to see where she was pointing; two squat little armchairs right at the opposite end of the room beneath a rather proud looking portrait of what appeared to be a meerkat in a wedding dress. "Here." He transferred some money to her hands. They really were cold. He wanted to take them in his own and heat them up. "Could you order me a brownie and a hot chocolate? They put cream on it if you ask."

Y/N was smiling at him but he didn't know what kind of smile it was. "Sure. Now quick, that couple looks like they want to take our seats."

...

Sherlock settled down into a chair that he was fairly certain was hand-made, and shrugged off his coat. Y/N was still in the queue to order, slightly crushed between a young woman with electric blue hair, and a tall old man who was sagging and wrinkled as if time had wrung him out. Y/N wasn't paying them much attention, though. She was staring at the multitudinous array of cakes and biscuits that filled the paisstire display next to the till. Each one was like a little work of art. Not the kind of art you find in upscale galleries full of perfect lines and exact proportions. Real art, with little personal-touches and mistakes. They were good mistakes, in Sherlock's mind. Too much caramel seeping out of the millionaire's shortbreads. A disproportionate chocolate chip to dough ratio in the cookies. Profiteroles like overstuffed pillows, fit to burst with cream. It was as if the bakers were eccentric millionaires who didn't give a toss about making a profit. Maybe they are?

The tables were decked with extravagances too; books to read, magazines to flick though, a little bowl of mints, a jar of sugar cubes. Sherlock reached out to take one, with the intent of placing it under his tongue to suck, but changed his mind at the last second and took a paper napkin instead. Someone had left a Biro on top of a copy of BBC Science Focus from last August. Picking it up and drawing an experimental scribble on one corner of the napkin, Sherlock angled his chair just enough to have a clear yet not-so-obvious view of the rest of the room. Of one part of the room in particular. The part where Y/N was currently admiring a plate of cupcakes though the sneeze-guard. The corners of her lips were tugged gently up in a smile she probably didn't know she was giving the world. This is what Sherlock sketched first. That subtle curve of amused contentment.

He didn't know why he'd done it, but by the time Y/N approached the table, carefully supporting a tray of goodies, Sherlock had completed an ink illustration of her waiting in line to be served.

The Biro he'd found had been on its metaphorical last legs, the nib clogging every now and again with hardened ink, but that hadn't mattered. He'd used the sudden rushes of black pigment as shadows, the dry spells for areas that warranted more careful shading, the times when it worked perfectly to delicately etch the folds of her clothes, the creases in her cheeks as she thanked the waitress.

"You were not lying about the brownies," Y/N said as she set the tray down on the table.

Sherlock had stuffed the napkin he'd drawn on into his pocket, hoping Y/N just assumed he'd used it as a tissue or something. This isn't the first time he'd done a quick little sketch of his best friend, and it wouldn't be the first time he  _ shows  _ her the final results either. 

She doesn't even know he  _ can  _ draw. No one does, really, apart from those that had lived in his house while he'd been growing up. For over eighteen years his parents had put his drawings on the fridge with a magnet. For over eighteen years his brother had called them a 'waste of time'. That does something to a person. Now Sherlock keeps his waste-of-times to himself. Especially when his waste-of-times are pictures of his female flatmate, who had definitely not given him permission to stare at her as he carefully inks every detail of her face onto serviettes. 

"I didn't even  _ ask  _ for it to come with chocolate sauce, they just kept pouring it on and I was standing there, like, 'am I supposed to say 'when' or something?'" Y/N pushed Sherlock's plate under his nose, bringing him back to earth. The crockery was decorated with patterns like those you chalk onto your doorstep during Diwali, not that Sherlock had a very good view of them under all the aforementioned chocolate sauce.

His mouth had started watering and Y/N giggled at him from across the table. "I should have helped you carry the tray over," he apologised, cutting off a wedge of his brownie with the miniscule cake knife that came with it. The handle was decorated with intricate swirling patterns much like those he imagined adorned Queen Elizabeth's cake knives. Maybe it  _ had  _ been Queen Elizabeth's. One of them, anyway. This cafe, afterall, was full of a surreal amount of kooky antiques.

"No, you were doing the very important job of saving our table. That older guy definitely had his eyes on it before you sat down."

"Does that make us bad people? Because we nicked a seat from an old man?" Sherlock dragged the wedge of brownie around his plate, trying to encourage its spongy consistency to soak up as much sauce as possible. 

Y/N had ordered a treat for herself too but set it aside, choosing to first wrap her hands around her hot drink, the tips of her fingers turning as pink as the walls as her blood cells rushed to soak up the warmth. "No, it's first come first served, finders keeper, survival of the fittest, all that stuff David Attenborough talks about."

"I think that law only applies in the wilderness, not independent coffee shops in central London."

"What do  _ you _ know about the  _ wilderness?" _

"I'll have you know," Sherlock said around a mouthful of brownie, waving his cake fork like a pointer professors use to direct their student's attentions to various places on a blackboard. "I have been camping."

She raised her eyebrows. "Have you, now?"

"Yes, with my family, in Wales, when I was seven."

"I can't imagine your brother in a tent."

He went a little pink. "Well, we didn't actually get to spend much time in the tent; it started hailing so we found a Holiday Inn. But I did have to  _ hike  _ to the Holiday Inn."

"I think it only counts as hiking if you're going uphill."

"Oh." He didn't have to see her face to know she was smiling at him.

"You have cream on your nose."

He did have cream on his nose. And chocolate sauce on his lips, and his fingers were sticky from holding his glass of molten chocolate which had been topped with so much cream little dribbles of it had trickled down the sides. He didn't care. Everything tasted too good to care.

"Sorry, this is the last napkin," Y/N said as she handed him the remaining paper towel.

Without thinking, Sherlock drew the one he'd hidden in his trouser pocket out and dabbed at his face. "You have it, I took this one earlier."

For some reason, Y/N laughed at him.

"What?"

"It looks like your moustache is a ghost."

"I don't have a moustache."

"You do now. You have ink on your lip."

Sherlock's stomach turned over, the brownie he'd eaten doing a less than graceful summersault. Had she  _ seen  _ the napkin? Well, obviously she'd seen the napkin, rather, had she seen what was  _ on  _ the napkin (and now also smudged across Sherlock's face). If she had she would have brought it up, right? And if he'd managed to smudge it across his lip that must mean the picture was facing  _ him _ , not her.

Trying to be discrete, Sherlock forced a chuckle, ignoring his ghost moustache and starting on cleaning up his hot-chocolate-coated glass instead. The sooner he'd used the napkin for its intended purpose the sooner he could scrunch it into a ball and hide it again---although he didn't know where. It was moist by now, the thought of cramming it back into his trousers was not exactly appealing.

"Why's there ink on the napkin?" Y/N asked, smoothly swapping her now-empty dessert plate for her drink, shuffling the saucers around like a magician about to ask you which one a ball is under, only to lift them up to reveal it had been behind your ear the whole time. "Did you get sudden inspiration for a haiku?" She was joking, and he was grateful for the tone because it gave him something to mirror.

In a way he hoped was equally lighthearted: "No, it was a shopping list."

The jocund rise to Y/N's voice died and was replaced by bemusement, her cake fork pausing just before reaching her mouth. "Since when do  _ you _ need to write a shopping list?"

Sherlock shrugged because he didn't know what to say to that. Y/N had, more than once, walked in on him roasting eyeballs over a bunsen burner at the kitchen table, and said nothing. He does something normal, like write a shopping list, and  _ that's  _ what she finds strange? Although, he is him. So maybe it is.

"Is your food nice?" He asked, a sorry attempt to change the subject. He'd managed to turn the napkin in his hand so was mopping his glass with the side the drawing was on. The sugar had crystallized into gummy trails, running down onto the tabletop and they caught the papery fibres, ripping little pieces off and chewing them into gluey blobs. 

This made Sherlerlock feel somewhat conflicted. He was glad the sketch was being eaten, smeared around until the picture was just an unrecognisable storm of ink and sucrose. That was better than Y/N possibly seeing it, and the inevitable bombardment of questions that would be flusteredly thrown his way.

However, it had been a nice picture.

...

They stayed for a few minutes more after they'd finished their drinks, a mix of reluctance to brave the cold, and a rapidly growing fondness for the quirky little cafe keeping them in their seats.

Y/N hadn't seen the drawing Sherlock had done of her while she'd been in the queue, but he didn't know that. He could only guess---from the way she hadn't brought it up---that he'd narrowly escaped, his hobby free to live another day in the dark.

Sherlock had wiped at his glass, the table, his hands, and only stopped when the napkin was a mutated, amorphous wreck, which he left on the plate that had once held his brownie. There was no chance of anyone figuring out what that spattering of ink had been. If anything, it just looked like a pen had exploded. 

Even after all the times he'd had been to the Pink Giraffe, and how long he'd just spent there now, Sherlock still kept finding new things to look at. The decor reminded him a little of 221B; Nineteenth-century wallpaper, several frames that housed taxidermied butterflies rather than photographs, mismatched furniture placed pretty much anywhere. Like him, the owners had probably gotten most of their belongings from antique stores. Or had items passed down from friends and relatives who couldn't be bothered to donate to said antique stores.

Despite this plethora of sights, Y/N's eyes had attentively followed Sherlock as he cleaned up, for the entire time he'd been doing it. As if he was a particularly interesting television show. He'd licked his finger (to rub off his ink moustache) and she'd turned the same pink as the walls. Sherlock had wondered what it had meant. He'd also thought it had been extremely endearing, and, despite the constant, nagging feeling that he's toeing some kind of line, took a quick mental picture of that expression with the intent of putting it onto paper later. He wanted to capture it just in case he never got to see it again. Maybe he'd use coloured pencils this time, so he could record the blush that had suffused her cheeks. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

One of Sherlock's secrets actually _did_ escape his grasp this time. He had them all clutched to his chest, stacked on top of each other like boxes a little too large to carry all at once. They w _ere_ too large to carry all at once; he dropped one and it fell to the floor with a thud, its contents spilling out over the lino, skittering around like marbles.

Luckily, though, someone helped him hastily retrieve the metaphorical marbles and shove them back in their packaging before anyone else could get a look at them. At _it._ Sherlock's secret is a little less secret now; the box suddenly seems much harder to hide. So many people know he's _trying_ to hide it; it's grown bulkier with the attention. It's only a matter of time before it is too big to pick up at all. Then he'll just have to leave it out in the open. We'll get to that later.

It was a Wednesday, at two forty-seven in the morning when one of Sherlock's secrets became a little less secret.

The place: Scotland Yard.

The person to uncover it (quite by accident): Greg Lestrade.

And it was all because of a street lamp.

...

"No, I said _prickly,_ that's---what is that?"  
  
"Stubbly."

"Exactly. His was more prickly."

Nicky scrubbed---once again---at the paper testily with the smudged stub of an eraser just about managing to cling to the end of his pencil. He had one hand spread over the sheet, pinning it to the desk so it didn't tear, and released it now, using that same hand to prod at the upper half of the page. It was empty, besides the ghost-like imprint of the sketch he'd just furiously rubbed out. The sketch had been of hair, but the hair hadn't been prickly enough.

Y/N was right, it had been more 'stubbly', if anything, maybe even bristly. Nicky didn't know that. He hadn't gotten a good look at the criminal he was supposed to be drawing, he hadn't gotten a good look at a _ny_ criminal, ever; he's just a police sketch artist. He's also tired. And rapidly running out of patience with the tall curly-haired man in the long coat who kept barking orders at him. He's trying his best, he really is. _Nicky_ is trying his best, not the curly-haired man. The curly-haired man could try a lot harder---in Nicky's opinion, anyway.

"That _was_ prickly, what do you even mean _, prickly?"_

Y/N leaned over to get a better view of the half-finished picture that sat squarely in the centre of the table. It was fraying and worn thin from many, _many_ corrected mistakes, little swirls of pencil-shavings and gummy lumps of eraser scattered everywhere. The picture itself wasn't... _bad_. Nicky is good at what he does, it was Sherlock and Y/N who was struggling; describing someone's face has turned out to be much more difficult than anyone would have expected. Y/N actually recalled saying, thoughtfully, "He had a nose" when asked what he looked like by Lestrade. Not one of her proudest moments, although, to be fair, it was 1:48 am, and she had been crouched in a dark room for the past five hours.

So, yes, Y/N had seen the criminal, he'd even met her eyes for a second---probably wondering whether she's worth silencing. He'd decided that she wasn't, and chose to flee instead. They'd pursued on foot---her and Sherlock---but to no avail. It is now forty-five minutes later and they're still no closer to showing Scotland Yard just who it is they're looking for. Nicky's drawing is just a rough outline of a face with two ears sticking out the sides (and even they were somehow the wrong shape).

"Prickly," Sherlock said, dropping the word down onto the desk and nudging it towards Nicky again like it's a food he's refusing to eat. "Short. Like... like stubble."

Nicky bit back a joke about how he will probably have _grown_ stubble by the time this is over, and instead pulled his chair in closer, his torso sort of wilted over the table, and set his pencil back into motion. He was sick of the scratchy noise the graphite made, sick of the LED lights reflecting stark and bright off the A4, and sick of getting things wrong. The only thing he wasn't sick of was the woman the curly-haired man had brought with him. She was softer-spoken than her taller companion and kept handing him apologetic smiles from across the desk.

Sherlock was sick of _that._ The way Y/N's pupils had gone all big, the way they followed the sketch artist's pencil around the page. Apart from when they'd dart up to glide over his hands or up his uniform-covered arms, finishing at his hair or lingering over his mouth. Maybe that's why Sherlock was being so clipped; he'd deny jealousy if asked, but of course anyone in the room could tell he'd be lying, even if they weren't all trained police officers. "No, his hairline started much further back, and it dipped here, then went really far forwards here." He dragged the tip of one finger over the gap on the paper representing the man's forehead, ignoring Nicky's nettled frown.

"He had a widow's peak," Y/N translated, the kind edge to her tone making a little bristle of something crackle its way up Sherlock's spinal column. "His forehead was quite large, a really blocky kind of rectangle shape."

"I'll see what I can do." Finally having some clear instructions to work off of, Nicky's shoulders loosened as he dipped his head to scribble a rough hairline onto his currently-faceless drawing. "Eyebrows?"

"Of course he had eyebrows!" Sherlock exclaimed. That sentence was actually supposed to end in 'you idiot', but he'd snipped that part off. He'd called Nicky an 'idiot' earlier and Y/N had given him a look so sharp he'd reached up to check he still had a nose. He'd decided, then, not to make her unhappy ever again in his whole life.

Sherlock's love for Y/N will always win over all else. Even jealousy at her obvious attraction to a strapping young policeman.

Taking in a deep breath then letting it out in a drawn-out sigh, Nicky finished mentally counting to ten and said in as much of a level tone as he could muster: "Yes, I know that. What I meant was, could you describe them to me? Shape, size---"

"This is stupid."

"It's not stupid," Y/N said resolutely. She was tapping one of her nails against the smooth surface of the desk, her fingers sounding like a miniature businesswoman, wearing miniature heels, striding off to a miniature meeting. "How are they supposed to know who to look for if we don't---"

Sherlock ran one large hand through his hair, the curls jumping free and staying that way; frizzed about his head. He's also tired. They're all tired, and he feels guilty because it's his fault.

 _Skylerman's---_ that's where he and Y/N had been crouching for five hours, waiting for someone to rob it. Or not. Sherlock didn't know for sure whether _Skylerman's_ would be the next place their thief would hit, and he didn't know he'd hit it that night. He just _hoped,_ and dragged Y/N along because---he didn't know why, really. Because he didn't want to get lonely? Because he wanted to impress her with his exhilarating, zany career?

Anyway, they'd been staking out _Skylerman's---_ a squat little jewellery store growing out of the back of a WHSmiths like a particularly shiny tumour. It still managed to shine _then_ , during the dead of night, although 'reflect' is probably a more accurate description. From every direction, smooth, absurdly-expensive rocks lined up on glass shelves had grabbed the fuzzy orange light of the street lamps and thrown it around the inside of the shop, covering everything in amber freckles.

The street-lamp-through-diamonds freckles had covered Y/N's face, making her look like she had a rather beautiful form of chickenpox. Sherlock had gotten rather lost in it, and, before he knew what had happened, a window was smashed, an alarm went off, and there was the thief, snatching shiny things and cramming them into his pockets. That's how Sherlock had realised he should be paying attention, actually; the orange dots all over Y/N's cheeks he'd been admiring started to move about as the jewels producing them were snatched up by the intruder.

If he hadn't been staring at Y/N's face---if he hadn't been head-over-heels in love---he would have caught that diamond-grabbing crook and they wouldn't be here describing the exact shape of said crook's eyebrow to an over-glorified cartoonist.

Okay, that wasn't fair. Nicky is good, even Sherlock, with his blood green with jealousy, had to admit that the man had talent. But he just wasn't talented enough to draw what he hadn't seen.

"I meant this is stupid, limiting ourselves to one person. Give me some paper, I think I know someone else who might be able to help. Y/N," Sherlock had to force the words from his throat, evict them in a way that he hoped didn't sound as disgusted as he felt, "Stay with Nicky and help him finish this picture."

Looking, quite frankly, glad the idea of being rid of the curly-haired man, Nicky eagerly tore off a sheet from the pad and handed it to Sherlock. He took it, trying not to snatch, and, like ripping off a plaster, tore himself from Y/N's company and started a brisk walk towards a room he guessed would be empty.

...

"Here." Sherlock slammed the sheet of A4 down on Lestrade's desk but, it being paper, didn't give off the authoritative, conclusive vibes Sherlock had been aiming for. Greg didn't even look up until he'd finished tapping a few more buttons on his keyboard. This would have been irritating had Sherlock not liked the noise it made as much as he did. _Click. Click. Click._

Lestrade's office is beyond 'messy', so it took him a second or two to locate the newest edition to his desk's pile of files, photos and documents. When he did, his eyes narrowed. He took the paper in one hand and brought it closer to his face to examine it, gaze sliding along the clean lines, taking in the delicate gradient of carefully shaded shadows and textures.

Eventually, he looked up at Sherlock's face, hardened and clenched with general irritation about the whole nature of the evening. Well, morning. "Did you do this?"

Deadpan: "No, I found someone upstairs to do it."

Greg's brow furrowed; one long, confused, hairy caterpillar. "You did." Before Sherlock had time to protest, he'd taken pale his wrist and turned it over, exposing the large spread of Sherlock's palm. "Your hand is covered in graphite."

And so it was, pinkie finger to wrist stained with a dark cloud of grey.

Sherlock snatched it back protectively, as if it was a wounded limb he wished to keep from harm, and jammed it into the depth of his coat pockets. He can't d _eny_ it, sure, Lestrade isn't the most intelligent man on Planet Earth (that would probably be Mycroft) but he's not incompetent, either. And he knew Sherlock well enough by now to tell when he's lying.

Indifferently, or what he hoped sounded that way: "Okay, maybe I did. So what?"

"'So what'?" Lestrade's confused-hairy-eyebrow-caterpillar levelled-up to a _bemused_ -hairy-eyebrow-caterpillar, and inched a bit further up his forehead. "This is amazing."

Poker-faced, again: "It's nothing." But he's glowing inside.

"It's not nothing, and you know it. You have a natural talent---"

And the glowing was extinguished abruptly, snuffed out, doused, switched off. Sherlock hadn't put hundreds of hours of practice into perfecting his skill just to have someone say he was 'born lucky'. It was much easier to act pococurante, now, as he said with a tone as plain as flour:

"Who cares?"

" _Who cares?"_ The back of Greg's legs bumped into his wheely-chair, pushing it away from his desk dramatically as he stood up to brandish Sherlock's drawing in his face, "Sherlock, I mean, look at this---"

Sherlock didn't look, his pale eyes hardening as he swatted the paper away like it was a fly that kept bothering him. "No, _you_ need to look at this. May I remind you that this man is a criminal---he's _killed_ three security guards already---and he's currently loose on the streets? The streets that are under _your_ jurisdiction."

"Okay, okay." Sighing, defeated, Greg exposed both palms in a gesture of surrender, throwing a little eye roll into the mix.

It made Sherlock uneasy; watching the older man handle his secret in this laze manner was like watching him hold a priceless porcelain vase with only one hand. Any minute he's bound to accidentally let it slip from his loose grasp, or overestimate its durability and crush it's petal-thin curves with clumsy fingers.

Lestrade was now scanning the drawing into a chunky photocopier that stood like a sentry in one corner of the room, the machine grumbling angrily about being woken up at such an ungodly hour. When it had finished he removed the wad of Wanted posters from the tray, and Sherlock tapped one finger on them. They were warm, warm like the bed he wanted to be in. 

"If anyone asks, I didn't draw this."

Clearly surprised: "Why?"

"I have my reasons." That had sounded---quite unintentionally---mysterious. To hone in the effect, Sherlock pushed his hands into his pockets once more, hoping his obvious desire to remain an enigma would put the detective inspector off from asking any more questions. It worked, in a way.

"Who do I say drew it then?"

"I don't care." Sherlock waved a nonchalant hand, catching sight of his watch face as he did so. Three in the morning. Guilt gripped his brain again, clutched it, pressed its long, talon-like claws into tender parts that made him flinch. He'd made Y/N sit with him in a darkened jewellery store, chase a criminal for well over a mile through darkened alleyways, and now he'd made her wait for him in a police station while he sneaks about doing art. At least the police station isn't darkened, it's the opposite, in fact, Nick's office a bleak, harsh white against tired eyes---

Nicky. Y/N had been talking to him for seventeen minutes.

"Make something up."

Greg was staring at the picture again, the original stacked neatly atop the duplicates "Okay, okay, fine, it's just...wow, Sherlock."

He's glowing again.

...

Lestrade pinned Sherlock's drawing to the Wanted board in the main part of the building amongst other 2D renditions of petty thieves, violent muggers, and savvy smugglers. Several officers gravitated over to get a look at it. Not because they wanted to know who they were searching for, but because the newest addition to the slice of cork stood out amongst all the rest like a mute swan among greylag geese. The contrast in quality was...quite frankly, staggering. Several people were gazing at it with an expression bordering on awe, others tilting their head as if confused whether it was a black and white photograph, then joining the awestruck people when they realised it wasn't.

Feeling his cheekbones heating, Sherlock slipped a hand---not the one smeared with graphite---from his pocket and undid his coat buttons. These people had never seen him blush before, and they weren't going to start now. He wouldn't be able to call them 'imbeciles' with the same level of conviction if they'd seen him flushing the same colour as the girl's section in the magazine aisle at CoOp. And then they'd ask him _why_ he's slightly lit up with shy pride, and then he'd have to confess to spending many hours and many parts of his vast intellect capturing natural beauty via pen and paper like some kind of lollygagger---

"Wow, that looks just like him," Y/N's voice interrupted the lecture Sherlock had been mentally scolding himself with.

He'd just gotten to a part that involved calling himself a 'hopeless romantic' that was 'wasting time with silly doodles' but pushed that aside and blinked down at his flatmate, best friend, and secret crush, with an expression bordering on moony. He'd meant to say: _'I've solved the problem, we can go now',_ or _'So, you had no luck with Nicky's artistic prowess, I take it?'---_ or something else snarky,but instead all he did was squeak out a curious little: "You think?"

Silly thing to ask, really, not very smooth, secretive, or mysterious of him, but he has some kind of affinity---nay, addiction---for Y/N's compliments. They feel like sucking on a wedge of chocolate, a warm, sticky, melty feeling oozing down into his chest and slowly filling his whole body.

"Yeah, are you joking?" She's still staring at the picture, pushing herself up onto her toes and swaying slightly to see around the growing group of uniformed onlookers. "You saw the guy, it's basically an exact match. Who did it?"

And, just like that, the melty-chocolate-feeling was gone, like he'd choked on it. Trying to steer Y/N's interest away from its current fixation, Sherlock took an overdramatised step towards the exit, hoping she'd follow suit.

She didn't.

"I was just about to come and get you, we can go home now." Another step, this time he dared to reach out and take her coat-covered arm. Little tingling sensations radiated from the spot and he blushed for a whole different reason; he's not even touching her _skin_ and his curious body still gets all on edge.

_Hopeless romantic._

"Who drew it?" Y/N asked again, a little firmer this time. She must have noticed that Sherlock is never too keen to point her in the direction of another's talents.

"I found someone upstairs to do it." He gave her arm a tentative little tug, feeling suddenly like an annoying child trying to get his mother to stop chatting with the other mums at Sainsbury's and take him home. It just added to his embarrassment. Sleep would be nice. Sleep, then, in the morning, he'd go and catch that stupid jewel thief who got away because he'd been too distracted by Y/N's stupid beautiful face. "Can we go now?"

"Wait, I want to get a closer look." She wriggled her arm free and slipped her hand down to take Sherlock's hand instead, her fingers slotting comfortably into the space between his, like the interlocking pegs of a zipper.

Sherlock's cheekbones had blossomed scarlet, his stomach sort of curling in on itself as Y/N started pulling him insistantly forwards until they were face to face with the board. His entire left arm was tingling like an electric current was buzzing through it. _Heart attack?_ He wondered vaguely. "Why?" Fell limply off his tongue, a prime example of a delayed reaction as he joined Y/N in examining his drawing.

She was looking at it with an entirely different expression to Sherlock's. His brow was furrowed, the space between his eyes crinkled in a critical squint, but Y/N's face was all gappy, features spread out; all raised eyebrows and wide eyes and gaping mouth.

"What do you mean, 'why'?" She sputtered, brandishing her free hand at the picture.

What is it with people gesturing at things when they don't feel you're appreciating them as much as you should? It's like they're directing your eyes to what you're supposed to be appreciating, just in case you were---somehow---accidentally looking at something else. What did they think was going to happen? That the person would concede: _'Ah, yes, that actually_ is _magnificent. Sorry, I thought you were talking about that stain on the wall.'_

"It's amazing. Someone _made_ that, Sherlock. Made it with their _hands_. Even you have to admit that's cool."

He didn't think it was cool. A little Mycroft-sounding voice in his head had barked a sarcastic, haughty laugh at Y/N's praise. When Sherlock looked at the thief's poster, a perfect duplicate of the expression he'd given him in _Skylerman's_ frozen forever on his face, he saw thousands of hours of his life he would never get back. A habit he couldn't quite shake. 

Y/N didn't. She saw... what did she see?

"It's not _that_ good. Anyone could do it if they practised enough."

Y/N gave his hand a frustrated little shake. Sherlock let the movement oscillate through him, his whole body---God knows why---utterly pliant to Y/N's touch.

"Maybe so, but this person actually _did_ it _._ They worked really hard to get that good, and now look at what they can _do."_ She'd settled now from stark, bare astonishment to quietly reverential, gazing at the picture with a subdued sort of humbleness. "Don't you think that's amazing?"

No, but he liked knowing that _she_ did. Y/N's words were like seeds falling into his ears and settling in his chest, blooming into lush, vibrant flowers, filling his torso with colour. If he's not careful they'll keep growing, up and out of his mouth, and he'll say something dumb like _'I'm the one that worked really hard to get that good. That was me'._ He tried to settle them, to keep them contained as he put on the best indifferent tone he could muster (which, with his baritone, is pretty indifferent): "I guess."

Some part of him; some small, selfish, hopeful little part had presumed Y/N would carry on trying to persuade him otherwise. He'd thought that maybe, just maybe, she'd keep pouring out compliments in an attempt to win him over, change his mind, while he revelled in her praise.

But she didn't. Instead, she turned to look at him sadly, and said in a voice thick with disappointment: "Why can't you just see the beauty in things?"


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s a dog.”

“A dog? What the Hell kind of dogs have you been looking at? It’s a racoon.”

“A very sick racoon, by the looks of it. Can racoons develop anorexia?”

Mycroft’s shoulders sagged in exasperation at this. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, he pointed---with less restraint than usual---to the top of the drawing where two lumps were protruding from his sketch’s back.

Mycroft is one of 221B’s most frequent guests, and also Sherlock’s older, much more serious brother. He is a tall, serious man who wears dark, serious suits, and an (almost-constant) serious expression. Sometimes---on rare occasions---he smiles, but it doesn’t help. His smile looks forced, like someone dressed a spider up like a waiter and threatened to fire him if he didn’t start being more hospitable.

It is customary for Mycroft to pop by on a slow afternoon for tea and board games; although God knows why, for several reasons.

The first:

Neither Sherlock or Mycroft seem to _like_ board games. ‘They’re called ‘board’ games for a reason,’ Sherlock would quip whenever one is suggested. ‘This is utterly trivial,’ Mycroft would complain as he sets up all the pieces. ‘That’s very immature of you,’ they’d both throw back and forth with almost every roll of the dice. They _say_ these things, their mouths pressed into unmoving, unamused lines, yet the very next week Mycroft will be back again, usually with some kind of box under one arm.

The second: Sherlock and Mycroft are very different people, thus, it seems strange that their lives should even continue to cross at all. Sherlock is, clearly, some kind of adrenaline-obsessed lunatic that should really be working as a parachute-tester, deep-sea-diver, or fighter-plane pilot rather than an urban detective. This is a harsh contrast to the mannerisms Mycroft calls his personality; the man is the king of all pencil-pushers. He seems to live life as though he could die at any given moment; not in a live-your-life-to-the-fullest kind of way, but as if he’s sad that he hadn’t.

The third (and most prominent) reason why the Holmes brothers board game sessions bemuse all that happen to come across them is: 

They don’t really get along very well. 

It is _possible_ for two unlikely people to form and maintain a friendship, yes, but these two don’t seem to have gotten past the ‘forming’ part let alone have a crack at ‘maintaining’ any sort of relationship. 

They fight over who gets to be ‘the top hat’, then they fight over who’ll be in charge of the little bits of paper money, then they’ll fight over the rule book, then they’ll fight over who won and who _actually_ won because the other had---allegedly---been cheating. Or, if they’d been playing a game with no pieces, like Kerplunk (or heaven forbid, Operation) they’d fight over who gets to go first, whether the other had nudged the table, and so on and so forth until one of them storms out of the flat. This will usually be Mycroft, but it isn’t unheard of for Sherlock to storm out of his _own_ flat. Y/N had watched her flatmate do this a few times; stomp out the front door, slam it behind him, then stop on the pavement outside, confused as to why he’d left, while his brother remains in the building Sherlock pays for, eating the biscuits Sherlock owns, warming himself by the fire Sherlock had made in the hearth.

It’s all rather childish and utterly pathetic and very amusing.

Y/N joins them when she can. Since becoming Sherlock’s flatmate and best friend however-long-ago-that-was, she’d quickly been absorbed into the Holmes’ little group of weekly sessions of whatever juvenile game one of them can find lodged at the back of their respected cupboards.

This week it's Pictionary. They’d never played Pictionary before---not together, anyway, partly because none of them owned it, and partially because whenever it was suggested that they render that fact and buy a copy, Sherlock would change the subject or distract everyone with food, a new topic of conversation, or a minor emergency.

They were only playing it now because Mycroft had ordered it online without telling anyone. He'd placed the box on the table before Sherlock had time to burn it (or something else) to distract everyone while he discreetly tries to throw it out the window.

Of course, Sherlock’s reason for wanting to yeet and/or burn any Pictionary boards he comes across is down to the fact that playing would mean uncovering one of his secrets, which could easily lead to exposing the other two. 

Obviously, it’s too late for Mycroft; since day one, he has been both aware of---and the chief tormentor of---Sherlock’s hidden affinity for art. However, it’s not too late for Y/N, she still remains in ignorance, and Sherlock isn’t about to let a board game be the thing that finally clues her in.

Sherlock’s face may have fallen into a moody frown when his brother presented his latest purchase to the small group, but Y/N was glad for this new addition to their hoard of games at their disposal. She’d sat through far more Ludo than she’d care to think about, her dreams seem to be infested with both snakes and ladders, and she’s started seeing the world in Scrabble chips. 

TESCO: seven points. 

SHAMPOO: fourteen points. 

TAXI: eleven points.

Because of this, her tone is light as she hurls various words at Mycroft from across the table, trying to guess what was written on his card. Presently, he's drawing angry circles around and around the doodle he'd done, hoping that will help his teammates understand what it’s supposed to be.

“A dingo!” Y/N offered excitedly, sure she’d finally got it. 

They’d given up on the timer several rounds ago; it didn’t give them nearly long enough. All the little grains of sand would have fallen into the lower chamber three times by now.

“You guessed that already.”

“No, I guessed a dog.”

“Maybe so, but they’re the same thing.”

Mycroft’s bony hand ceased its incessant circling of the wonky, slightly sick-looking creature, clearly aggravated by Y/N and Sherlock’s ignorance. Although to be fair, he wasn’t exactly giving them much to work with. He’d drawn a deformed, miserable representation of a four-legged animal, standing on a line. 'Drawn' isn't even the right word; there is no word for what Mycroft has done. His sketch looked as though a shaky string of ink had wobbled from the pen and is currently writhing in agony on the paper. 

Resorting to an older tactic, he added a sketchy, desperate arrow pointing to the animal’s back. Clearly, that particular, lumpy line is important. Mycroft kept drawing more arrows, his lips pressed firmly together---probably so he didn’t let slip any clues (or expletives).

“You keep pointing to those but we don’t know what they are!” Y/N protested as another arrow was added to the collecting cloud above the creature.

Sherlock squinted at it and asked in a puzzled tone: “Are they breasts?”

This time Y/N squinted at _him_ rather than the picture. “Have you ever _seen_ a breast?”

Electing not to answer that: “Is it a llama?"

"I still think it's some kind of dog.”

“It’s not a dog!” Mycroft all but yelled, getting a shushing from Sherlock.

“You’re not supposed to give us clues.”

“Now, hold on,” Y/N soothed, noting Mycroft’s despairing expression and the fact that the minute-hand of his watch was nowhere near where it had been when they’d started guessing. “I think we _need_ a clue.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, falling back into his chair with his arms firmly crossed over his stomach. “Screw the clues, we’re never going to get it. Mycroft always failed art at school.”

“Because art isn’t important. _You_ got a D in maths,” Mycroft shot back. “Several times.”

Nettled: “I have _photo-realistic_ Aspergers, Mycroft, you know full well that means I---”

“Is it a tiger on a tightrope?” Y/N asked, tilting her head to the side. She hoped approaching from another angle would offer up a new perspective, but all it really did was perplex her further. Righting herself, sighing. “Or perhaps a lion?”

“If it was a tiger I would have added stripes. And it’s not a lion, do you see a mane?”

“The females don’t have manes. Is it a jaguar in a circus?”

“Just move away from cats. And tightropes.”

“You’re really not supposed to be talking,” Sherlock plucked another Custard Cream from the plate to his left and tried to separate the two slices of biscuit with his hands. Inevitably, it shattered, sending little crumbs all over the tabletop.

Mycroft made a sort of growling noise and dusted at his (now biscuit-freckled) suit with the hand not holding the pen angrily. “Are you _still_ doing that?”

Scraping the cream out with the smooth edge of his front teeth: “Doing what?”

“Playing with your food.”

Y/N gave Sherlock’s forearm a little shake, sending more crumbs scattering about the place (and Sherlock’s heart to do a weird little fluttery thing). “I think I know what it is!”

Mycroft visibly relaxed. “Oh, thank God.”

“It’s a horse,” she declared triumphantly.

Sherlock nodded in understanding as if that totally made sense to him. Yes, there’s the long face, and the narrow columns---he guessed---to represent legs. And that would explain the pointed ears and long neck. But what it _doesn’t_ explain is those weird little toe things on the end of the legs, or those cancerous lumps on its midsection.

Maybe they’d have more luck guessing what it was Mycroft had been trying to draw if he scribbled out his first attempt and had another go somewhere else on the page.

Or if he tries to spell out the _sound_ of the word rather than drawing what it actually says on the card.

Or maybe Mycroft is just bad at drawing (as Sherlock had so astutely pointed out using his heightened, eminent detective skills). He’s always been bad at it, even as a child---before he’d wrung the creativity out of himself like water from a sponge---not that there was much to wring out to begin with. Art requires not only hand-eye coordination but that certain vision, that way of seeing the world that Mycroft just...does not seem to have. He takes things very literally, skimming the surface of reality rather than bothering to dig down and sift through the layers.

Sherlock has always been the polar opposite, since before he can remember; eagerly hunting through everything he sees for hidden details, clues, or snippets of beauty like nuggets of gold submerged in the heaps of mass that is reality:

The crisp, crackling noise autumn leaves make as you stand on them, their delicate forms crushed against the concrete.

The swirl of a snail's shell.

A cup of water refracting light, stretching it, tearing it apart until every colour of the rainbow spills out and stains the table below.

Sherlock finds all of these things---although simple and vastly common---to be beautiful. He’d happily spend hours listening to rain pattering against the awning of _Speedy’s_ _Cafe_ from the living room window. Or submerging his hands in a bag of flour, letting the unbelievable softness slip through the gaps between his fingers. And staring at things through his microscope, noting every little minute detail like the rocky edges of a sugar crystal, or the taught stretch of a delicate membrane.

These small, mundane little things are what make his life worth living.

Mycroft, however, doesn’t seem to be able to comprehend these joys; or even recognise that there is joy to comprehend. He doesn't know he's even missing out on anything. He just sees...leaves. A snail. A cup of water. Rain. Flour. Microscope slides.

Mycroft shook his head, looking pained. “No, it’s not a horse, for Christ’s sake!” Then immediately cleared his throat, his cheeks heating slightly at the fact that he’d allowed himself to lose his temper---and over something so trivial. He straightened his already one-hundred-per-cent-straight tie and smoothed away a few imaginary wrinkles in his jacket. Somehow, his tie matches the colour of the wallpaper. “But you’re closer than you were with the cats.”

This continued for the amount of time it took Sherlock to consume another two biscuits (at which point Mycroft confiscated the plate). The amorphous animal sketch gained more arrows squarely indicating to his back, Y/N’s brow gained more creases of confusion, and Sherlock had stopped paying attention a long time ago (he was now pushing Custard Cream crumbs into a little pile with the pad of his forefinger). Mycroft’s spine had sagged several inches with every passing second, as if the ground was trying to reclaim him.

When he was nearly eye-level with the table, he _finally_ announced (much to the relief of everyone in the room):

“It’s a camel!”

This was met with silence. They saw but they did not believe.

“See?” Mycroft pushed himself back up, like a zombie rising from the grave, and indicated with one long finger to the wobbly line that constituted the creature’s back. “There are its humps. They're a _very_ defining feature. How could you not get that?”

Y/N cleared her throat and tried to pull her lips into an understanding smile. “Oh, yeah." Her head was nodding but everything she was saying was a lie. A _nice_ lie, a little tiny white one---to spare Mycroft's feelings. "I see it now.”

“You _do?”_ Sherlock wasn’t being so amiable; he’s still shamelessly peering between the drawing and his brother as if nothing the man had handed him a toaster and told him it was a time machine. “That’s nothing _like_ a camel!”

Affronted: “Yes it does. Granted, it’s not a very life-like representation---it is a little on the cartoonish side---but it has all the key elements.”

“Don’t try to fob that off as a cartoon, that’s just offensive.” Some kind of smirk was curling at the side of Sherlock’s mouth, and it made Mycroft’s lips knit tightly together.

He’d seen that look several times over his lifetime and he’d hated every single one.

It’s the look Sherlock had smeared all over his face when he passed his driving test---while Mycroft still didn’t even have his provisional license.

It’s the same smirk he wears whenever mother dishes seconds onto Sherlock's plate---while telling Mycroft not to be so greedy.

It's the look he has when he beats him at a word game, Deductions, or any of their other silly little competitions. 

Smug, that’s what that look is. It’s the signature expression worn by younger siblings when they best their older brethren in any way. It’s the face of disrespect; it means Mycroft has lost some of his pride, had it snatched from him by his little brother because his skills have fallen short. If they were a pack of wolves, Sherlock would currently be challenging Mycroft’s role as alpha.

Mycroft also has a sneaking fear that this is the kind of thing Sherlock won’t forget about for a long time. It is the job of the younger sibling to humiliate the older in any way possible, and this---Mycroft's sad little attempt at a camel---is an opportunity too good to miss.

He looked down at the scrawny doodle staring up at him from the table with its wonky eyes; little raisins of ink pressed into its misshapen head. Sherlock will probably make it into a T-shirt, or get it printed onto a mug (which he’ll hide in the breakroom of Mycroft’s place of work, labelled, so his co-workers could all have a good laugh).

“Sherlock,” Y/N gave his ribs a nudge with her elbow. She’d probably figured the same thing. Her flatmate rarely manages to best his big brother, but, on the few times he does, the gloating is prolonged and powerful.

“What?” He asked, liking her touching him even if it was to give him a warning jab in the side with a spiky bone in her arm. “I’m just saying, how were we supposed to get that? It’s pitiful. What’s that line? _Was_ he on a tightrope?”

Mycroft narrowed his eyes at his brother as if he couldn’t quite tell if he was messing with him. “No, that’s the _ground_. I couldn’t make it grass, or have trees, or whatever, because deserts are famously barren.”

“The horizon goes _behind_ the subject, Mycroft.” Sherlock cocked one eyebrow, folding one leg over the other under the table.

Mycroft felt himself suddenly wishing they were children again---everything was so simple back then. Seven years younger than his brother, Sherlock was a scrawny little thing---essentially an assortment of spindly sticks---that could easily be pushed over. Back then, their age gap actually meant something, and worked in Mycroft's favour.

Not anymore.

“Even two-year-olds have figured that out," Sherlock continued his attack, clearly finding his brother’s lack of prowess in something very amusing. This got him a very gentlemanly snarl (if there is such a thing), and Y/N suddenly grabbed the paper from across the table and dragged it over, along with a pen from the pencil case by Mycroft’s hand. 

Sherlock watched the white rectangle advance and then stop before him, feeling like he’d swallowed a stone.

Then, the words he’d been dreading:

“You have a go, if you think you’re so great.”

…

Sherlock blinked at Y/N’s determined expression, her eyes boring into his, challenging him. Under any other circumstances, he’d probably find this incredibly arousing and retort with something smooth and cocky and a little provocative. Like ‘make me.’ Well, he’d say that in his head, whilst his body actually turns into a gooey puddle on the floor, his cheeks the colour of jam and his voice cracking like a flustered schoolboy.

Now, though, the look Y/N was giving him, and the tone of her voice, was more anxiety-inducing than amusing. He feels as though he’s clutching his secrets to his chest and she’s trying to pry the grip away from some of his fingers.

“No, thanks, you two can have another go.” Sherlock pushed the piece of A4 back across the table, Custard Cream crumbs making a gritty scraping noise as they ground below the paper. Everyone was looking at him and he didn’t like it, so with one hand (just to give it something to do) he reached for the plate of biscuits. His fingers bumped into the table and he remembered Mycroft had commandeered the plate. Stupid Mycroft.

Said man’s eyebrows were pulled together in the centre of his forehead. Taken aback: “ _You_ don’t wantago at drawing?”

Sherlock shook his head with a ‘Nah’ sound, taking one end of the pen and sending it spiralling across the table. It came to a stop at Mycroft’s pale wrist, just poking out from the perfectly-tailored shirt sleeve. Pushing a pen _away_ felt strange. Usually, the sight of one fills him with a strong urge to take it in one hand and see what it can do. Like a car you'd like to give a test drive, or an outfit you think might suit you. 

Sherlock knew that his brother was confused about his lack of willingness to take a turn, of course he did. If Y/N knew of Sherlock’s secret abilities, she’d be puzzled too.

He would _dominate_ at Pictionary. His attempts wouldn’t be mere _doodles,_ they’d be works of art. He’d leave everyone else’s scores in the dust, he’d humiliate his older brother, and impress the woman he’s had a crush on for---well, since he’d met her. Why on earth is he turning that down?

A smirk twitched at the corner of Y/N’s lips.

Sherlock loved and hated it at the same time.

“You don’t want a go? Well, I’m no detective, but that must mean that you’re a worse drawer than Mycroft. No offence, Mycroft.” She added hastily before he could shoot her a warning look.

That could work. Sherlock took the life raft Y/N had inadvertently tossed his way and drawled: “Exactly, there’s no point in me having a go, you’d never guess it. We’d be here all night.”

“That just makes me even more curious.” Y/N was smiling, her grin burning into the side of Sherlock’s face. “Come on, it’ll be funny. We won’t make fun of you. Much.”

“No thanks.” He’d tensed up in his chair, his posture slouched and indifferent but his muscles alert as if he’s preparing to bolt from the room at any second. Maybe he would, if given the chance.

Mycroft was still staring at Sherlock as if he had grown an extra head. “Sherlock, what are you---?”

“Shut up, Mycroft.”

Y/N blinked, the slight snarl in Sherlock’s tone making her jump as if there’d just been a power cut or sudden bolt of lightning. She moistened her lips, recovering, but her smile was gone. Now she looked a little miffed, and it made Sherlock’s insides try to fold in on themselves. “Okay, fine, you don’t have to have a go. Mycroft, do you want another turn?”

“I think we’ve had enough Pictionary for one day,” he sighed, the whole affair something he’d rather forget. His eyes were still slightly narrowed, regarding his younger brother with scientific interest.

Sherlock squirmed under his gaze.

Y/N either hadn’t noticed, or she _had_ , but decided not to interfere (as she so often---wisely---did when it came to the Holmes brother’s squabbles). “Shall we play something else? I think Mrs Hudson has Trivial Pursuit. Shall I go and ask her if we can borrow it?”

“That’s a good idea,” Mycroft said with a nonchalant wave of one hand as Y/N rose from her seat. “Thank you.”

Sherlock knew why he’d let Y/N search for the next game rather than do the gentlemanly thing and offer to fetch it himself. Sherlock knew what was coming, and sure enough, as soon as Y/N’s footsteps could be heard descending the stairs to the ground floor, Mycroft asked:

“What was all that about?”

“All what?” The inquisitive tilt of Sherlock’s head and the puzzled edge to his voice didn’t fool his brother for a second.

“You know what. The _lying_. _”_

“What lying? I didn’t want to have a go, so what?” A little-too-indifferent incline of his shoulders. A tightening of his arms where they were knotted over his torso like a seatbelt. A twitch in his jaw where a muscle feathered.

Mycroft’s steely eyes flicked from one tell-tale sign of anxiety to the next, little lines of text (probably) appearing in his peripheral---like Terminator Vision. “You implied you’re a terrible artist, which we both know to be absolute rubbish. And Y/N didn't dispute you, which means she has never---in all the time she's lived with you---seen one of your drawings.”

Sherlock’s cheekbones had sprinkled pink at the word ‘artist’, his heart feeling warm and fuzzy; like a balloon filled with static electricity. Mycroft has never called him that before. A halfwit, an ignoramus, a lollygagger, yes, but never an _artist._ Never anything that recognises his skills, let alone compliments them.

“You would have won, by _miles_. And made Y/N go all swoony over you. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted for God knows how long?”

The pleased and rather flattered blush suffusing Sherlock’s face deepened to a sort of tomatoey shade of red. “What? No." Before Mycroft could dispute this obvious fib: "I didn't want a go because you're right. Y/N doesn’t know I can draw, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

Instantly: “That's ridiculous. Why?”  
  


“Because...drawing is a pointless waste of time.” Sherlock's blush drained away as if a plug had been pulled. He'd had started the sentence tentatively, as if he hoped Mycroft would step in and correct him. When he---predictably---didn’t, Sherlock continued, his tone sharpening as a slight flame of self-hatred sparked up at his own words: “I don’t want Y/N seeing me as someone that wastes his time doing things that are pointless.”

Mycroft’s features were still assembled in a look of complete bafflement. He knows so much, but now he’s faced with something that his adroit mind can’t figure out, and the effects are strange. It doesn’t suit him, all the raised eyebrows and blankness behind his eyes where the swirl of carefully-calculated thoughts should be. “You’re absolutely right, it is useless and pointless and a waste of time. But that’s just what _I_ think. Sherlock, surely your desire to impress Y/N would be better achieved by showing her your talent and skill?”

“I don’t _want_ to impress her,” Sherlock tried weakly, with a piteously low amount of conviction. He’s lying to Mycroft and himself, and he’s not doing a very good job of it.

“You do,” Mycroft tossed that fact down between them as easily as though it was a set of cards he knew would win him a round of poker. “I can't believe you haven't brandished your excellence in her face already; people love that sort of thing; all that romantic artsy nonsense.”

“ _You_ don’t. You think it’s stupid.”

Suddenly, Mycroft got the feeling that his wish had come true; that they had indeed been teleported back in time to when they were children. Sherlock has that dejected, self-conscious look he was always trailing around in as a youth; eyes on his hands which fiddled with each other as he hides behind his floppy fringe. He’d pulled himself out of his laid-back slouch and was now bent slightly over the table like a plant in the rain. It made Mycroft shift uncomfortably in his chair. The two have their differences, but Sherlock is still his little brother, after all.

Mycroft just wished he knew how to be a big brother. He should comfort Sherlock, that much was clear. Say something nice, call him clever and then apologise for all those years he’d snapped bitter things out of jealousy.

But he didn’t.

Instead, because he seems to be allergic to decent human behaviour, Mycroft stated: “And it is.”

Sherlock’s shoulders wilted a little more.

“But, again, that's just what _I_ think. And who cares about that?” Mycroft added, trying to sound like he hadn’t just experienced a bout of personal growth that any psychologist would be proud of. “Y/N wouldn’t think it’s stupid. She’ll probably shower you with praise and do more of that thing she does where she touches your arm while staring up at you with big moony eyes. Don’t you want that?” He sounded close to retching at the thought, but it had the opposite effect on Sherlock.

"No!" But he'd gone pink again, picturing it. Picturing Y/N looking at him with the same level of awe she'd had whilst gazing at that drawing he'd done in the police station all those weeks ago. Picturing her eyes going all wide, her jaw falling open, lips parted in a pretty little 'O' shape as she takes in the curves of graphite, arches of ink, brushes of charcoal.

He visibly wavered.

Running a hand through his hair and sitting up a little straighter: “...Maybe.” There was a pause where his mouth opened and closed several times without making any noise. “...Yes. But if I tell her I _can_ draw she might ask _what_ I draw.”

“Then show her your sketches,” Mycroft stated as if that was a simple thing to do. “You must have thousands by now.”

Too quickly: “I can’t.”

Mycroft narrowed his eyes---with suspicion rather than confusion, this time. As if he was afraid of the answer: “...Why not?”

This got him a glare and a kick from Sherlock’s sock-covered foot under the table. It didn’t hurt, if anything, Mycroft was more concerned about lint travelling from the old material of Sherlock’s sock to his nice clean trouser leg.

“Nothing like that!” 

"I didn't say anything!"

"You were thinking it." He’s hiding again. Tucking himself closer to his centre like he wants to fold into himself again and again and again until he collapses into a singularity, safe from his brother’s judgmental gaze. “It’s just that...sometimes---usually, recently---I draw...her.” Desperately: “Nothing weird! Honestly. Just her smile. Or expressions I liked. Or the way her hair was falling on that particular day.” He used hand gestures as he spoke, miming the curves of Y/N's lips, the sweep of her hair, his eyes going soft with fondness.

Mycroft thought it was...pitiful? Pathetic? He feels like he's visiting his brother in A and E, looking down at him dying slowly on a hospital bed of a hideous disease. It mystifies him, more than anything else; why would anyone, _ever_ , choose to fall in love? Look what it does to you, what it _makes_ _you_ _do_. “...You draw her without her knowing?"

“Well _obviously_ without her knowing, or we wouldn't be having this conversation!” Sherlock snapped. He kept glancing at the door, either willing Y/N to hurry up and return so this conversation could be cut short, or because he's scared she'd returned a long time ago and heard everything he'd just confessed.

There was a silence while Mycroft mulled the information he'd gained over, and tried to form some kind of next step. Nothing he'd learnt today surprised him; Sherlock has always been a hopeless romantic, it was only a matter of time before someone caught his attention (and his heart). He likes that sort of thing---touching, messing about, having someone dote one him---despite Mycroft's efforts to wean him off it. Sherlock eats up any affection he's offered eagerly; first, it was Mother's and Father's, then friends and acquaintances; of course he's drawn to Y/N. He's probably dreamt of gaining the affections of an intelligent, pretty young woman since he'd turned thirteen.

Despite whatever beef Mycroft has with his sibling, he won't tell Y/N Sherlock's secret. He's not sure why. Maybe because he feels sorry for him, the poor love-sick bastard. Maybe it's a genetic thing, some deep-rooted instinct about family members sticking together. Or maybe it's because of a third reason that surprised even himself:

"I think you should tell her."

Alarmed: "What?! No!" Sherlock's spine had snapped straight and taught as a bowstring. "She'd think me a creep."

Mycroft shrugged. "The drawings sound complimentary. Maybe she'd be flattered."

"You're just telling me to show her because you want a good laugh,” Sherlock muttered, his handsome mouth turned down into a frown. “I'll be humiliated and my best friend will leave me, and you'll be able to gloat about how right you were."

"About what?"

Frown deepening into a glower: "About relationships being a waste of time."

“Lots of things are a waste of time, that doesn’t mean they should be actively avoided.” This resulted in a sort of stunned silence. What Mycroft had just said was entirely contradictory to his previous beliefs and way of life, and Sherlock knew that. That’s why he’s just blinking at him from across the table. Sighing: “We just spent an embarrassing amount of time squabbling over a drawing of a camel; is that the best use of our limited time on Earth? No, but it was _fun_ , so it doesn’t really matter.”

"...You think I should tell Y/N my secret because it would be _fun?"_

“No, I’m saying you should tell her you’re interested in pursuing a relationship because---if she is too--- _that_ would be fun. For you. Just because _I_ think they’re inane that doesn’t mean they inherently _are._ I mean, look what friendship is doing for you.” Mycroft's uncharacteristically soft tone was met with warranted suspicion:

“What do you mean?”

Disgusted: "Well it's obviously doing you good. You're all...happy."

Sherlock went red at this, folding back in on himself again like one does when an older relative points out something embarrassing about you in public. Mumbled from somewhere under his fringe: "I wish Y/N would come back."

One of Mycroft’s eyebrows raised an inch up his forehead, the corner of his lip tugging into a smirk: "So you can flaunt your artistic prowess?"

"No, so we can stop discussing my love life."

"Or lack thereof."

This got Mycroft another hefty kick from under the table. 

…

At last, Y/N did return. She was holding a box that looked older than time.

"Found it. We had to search through three cupboards, and one of those foot-stools that opens up like a chest," she explained, dropping the box down on the table. A dust cloud billowed into the air like a mini nuclear bomb, and everyone waved their hands in front of their face, mentally praying they won't catch tuberculosis.

Trivial Pursuit lasted two hours. Sherlock spent most of that watching Y/N's face light up like rays of sun through a waterfall whenever she got a question right, then blushing when she caught him staring. He had quickly decided that the game pieces were the best part of Trivial Pursuit. He liked how they fitted neatly into their own little slots to form a segmented cake-like shape. Screw the game, he'd rather organise all the colours into their own, satisfying wheels again and again, like a tiny jigsaw puzzle. They're one of those small, mundane, _beautiful_ things; like leaves, a snail, a cup of water, rain, microscope slides, and the texture of flour. 

As well as admiring Y/N while she wasn't looking, Sherlock also couldn't stop turning Mycroft's advice over in his mind, inspecting all its sides and angles as if it was a machine he didn't quite know how to work. Was his older brother correct? Would Y/N really be flattered that he's dedicated hours of his life to secretly outlining the shape of her nose, or the sweep of her figure? Mycroft has never been wrong before...not that Sherlock knows of, anyway. However, there's always a first time for everything. 

_'Of course she'd be freaked out,'_ Sherlock scolded himself as he rolled one of the little pie-shaped plastic wedges between finger and thumb. _'What does_ Mycroft _know about relationships?'_

...

Y/N won Pictionary, seeing as one player had forfeited and the other was indisputably terrible at drawing.

Sherlock decided not to tell Y/N about his secrets. He's scared of her not liking him anymore. He didn't win any games either, but Mycroft had called him an 'artist' earlier, which was a win in his mind.

Mycroft won Trivial Pursuit, because of course he did. The others didn't stand a chance.


	4. Chapter 4

And now for the one time all three of the metaphorical cats left the metaphorical bag.

...

It all started on a damp afternoon in mid-April when Sherlock came home with a bruised cheek.

The bruise had begun a shocked red, an explosion of blood cells rushing through capillaries. By now, the passage of time had dulled it into a mellow purple hue, a stark and bare contrast of colour against his china-cup-pale skin.

A man had hit him, and was now wishing he hadn’t. The man's hand had suffered much more than Sherlock’s face. The prominent bone his bare, unsuspecting knuckles had collided with had felt like a whetted wedge of marble. He’d doubled over to cradle his wounded fist tight to his chest immediately after delivering the punch, protectively shrinking away like a wounded animal.

There’s a reason boxers are encouraged to lightly bounce on the balls of their feet. In a fight, it’s best to keep moving. The man didn’t keep moving, he was too distracted trying to nurse something----anything---back into his fingers. This allowed Sherlock to neatly and efficiently disable him even further, and slip his wrists into a pair of handcuffs.

A useless piece of information: The man doesn’t care that he lost the fight, or that he was arrested. He’s just glad the police station has first aid.

Sherlock couldn’t smile as he greeted Y/N upon entering the flat, although he wanted to. Smiling meant his contused muscles pulling up the corners of his lips, dragging them back, away from his teeth. The movement twinged more than he’d expected it to.

It was probably because of the lack of smiling that Y/N reached the fairly logical conclusion his wound was much worse than it actually was.

Sherlock can read Y/N like a book. Well, he can read everyone like a book, but she is his favourite. He’d read her many times, cover to cover. He’d memorised paragraphs. He’d kept notes and jotted in the margins. He is an expert on all things Y/N. It didn’t take an expert to register her obvious, abt concern, though. Her shoulders had set and her mouth had fallen open enough to give Sherlock a glance at the rocky edge of her teeth.

“I’m fine,” He said quickly, his words nudging the ones she’d been about to say gently back into her chest. “Remember that case with the bottle-opener?”

Y/N had been cleaning. There was something sticky on the table that would cling to her shirt sleeve every time she sat down. Scrubbing hadn’t really helped. If anything, it had made the situation worse; the sticky thing had grabbed at the cloth and bitten off bunches of fibres. Now it looked like it had grown fur. It had evolved.

The door opening had been a welcome distraction, but the sight of her friend’s beaten-up face had been very _un_ welcome. Well, not his face. The bruise flowing on his cheekbone was the worrying imposter. It had made Y/N’s stomach slip between the rest of her organs and fall wetly onto the floor. Who had done this? And was revenge necessary?

Y/N nodded. She remembered all of Sherlock’s cases. Mainly because he enjoyed telling her about them. She also enjoyed hearing about them. It was a perfect arrangement. “The guy with the black hair?” She’d asked the question but it didn’t matter. She’d just said it as something to say.

“Yeah, him. I caught him today and he hit me.” Sherlock had slipped his cobalt scarf from his neck and was now busying with his coat buttons. The material had crystal-clear droplets of moisture pebbled over the shoulders---from the rain---and harsh scrapes of murky globules staining the elbows---from where he’d accidentally ran them along the slick walls of an alleyway. Everything’s always slick in April---showers and all that.

“Does it hurt?” Y/N asked, and she noted the slightest hint of a smile fluttering around Sherlock’s biteable mouth, then a wince of pain causing it to retreat.

He liked her caring about him; not many people have ever done that. But caring meant worrying, and he didn’t like the thought of worrying her. He didn’t like the thought of lying, either. “Yes, a bit, if I move my face. I'll just use this side until it heals." He attempted a grin with one side of his mouth, wanting to make Y/N laugh and stop staring at him like that; like him being hurt somehow hurt _her_.

“Is that _your_ blood?” She’d come closer now, not seeming to have even realised he’d say anything. Her eyes were fixed on the freckles of rusting scarlet dappled over the front of Sherlock’s shirt.

He’d completely forgotten it was there. He’d planned to take his coat off in his room, change shirts, and discreetly wash the marked one without Y/N knowing. So much for that.

“No, that’s not mine, don’t worry,” he assured, starting on his shoelaces. “I gave the guy a nose bleed. Not on purpose.” He didn’t want to describe their fight because that would paint mental images of him in danger in Y/N’s mind. The last time he’d done that---drabbled excitedly on about how he’d narrowly avoided a light stabbing---Y/N had gone very pale.

Y/N’s muscles relaxed in her clothes. “Okay, good. I mean, not good that you gave someone a nose bleed but good that it wasn’t...you know.” She hadn’t trailed off, that was the intended end of her sentence. ‘You know’ is something she doesn't let herself contemplate. “I’ll get you an ice pack.”

“Thank you.” Sherlock followed her to the kitchenette. His brain had been absently daydreaming of a snack all the way home. “I’m starving, I had to chase him for about half a mile.”

Their fridge and freezer are one and the same; it's one of those ones with the smaller door at the bottom (the freezer part) and a larger door at the top (the fridge part). Y/N was digging around for an ice pack when the light was suddenly blocked by Sherlock above her, hunting for leftovers in the fridge.

“That’s, how long? Five minutes of running? You poor thing,” she teased, getting a good-natured glare falling from above. It landed on the top of her head.

Sherlock found half an uneaten cheese sandwich and piece of a cake, which made him happy. Well, the cake did. The sandwich was slightly hard. It would make a good brick, he’d contemplated, then started wondering if bread would be a good insulator while he leaned against the counter to consume his snacks. He was watching his flat mate’s breath billow in front of her. She's still fudging about in the freezer.

It took Y/N a little while to find an ice pack, and even then it wasn’t one of those ones designed for medical purposes. It was a transparent bag of blue goo that you freeze and then leave in a lunch box to keep things cool. It had fallen right to the bottom then been stuffed to the back of the second shelf, hidden by their collective stash of ice cream.

“We should really get a proper one of these,” Y/N mused as she took Sherlock’s arm and moved him to where she wanted him to be; in front of a chair and slightly illuminated by the kitchen light. 

Sherlock let her, pliant and yielding. "I like this one. It feels nicer," he said, mainly to distract himself from what it felt like having Y/N nudge him about.

She released him when they were on the other side of the kitchen table and his wrist continued to tingle pleasantly where she’d held him. “Here, sit down, you’re too tall.”

That made him smile again, wince in pain again, and he sat, muttering as he did so: 

“No, you’re too small.”

An age-old argument. One of their favourites.

Now that Sherlock was sitting, Y/N got close enough to hold the ice pack to the tender patch of grape-coloured skin. To do so, she’d nudged his knees apart, casually getting between his legs and he’d gone beetroot coloured.

Y/N might have noticed but didn’t say anything. What she did say is: “You’re an idiot.”

To which Sherlock couldn’t help laughing, a rumbling chuckle from somewhere in his throat. He’s staring up at her, but only casting glances at her eyes. Y/N thinks this is because mutual gaze spooks him (and it does) but that’s not why he’s letting his vision meander over her nose, her lips, the shadows her hair makes across her forehead.

“And yet I solved a crime today,” he amended her teasing observation, using one side of his face to smirk at her. Even if it didn’t hurt to use the other side, he still wouldn’t have. Smirking is most effective when done with only one end of your lips.

“And could have gotten a concussion.”

“You worry too much.”

“You don’t worry enough.”

Another age-old argument. Both of them fight their side with equal passion, but both are wrong. Sherlock worries all the time, he’s just buried it under a thick pile of nonchalance. So thick, it seems that he’s forgotten it's there himself. Y/N doesn’t worry too much, she worries an adequate amount, given the situation. Some would say she should worry a little _more_. Like that time she’d assisted Sherlock with a case that involved a burning building, two chivs and a car chase. That should have worried her much more than it did. And, despite not showing it, it worried Sherlock a great deal. That had been Too Close. Too close to something happening to Y/N.

That is one of Sherlock’s main worries, one of the largest in the group of them that sit, dormant, six feet under the soil of his mind. If _Y/N_ came home with a beaten-up cheek he’d go ballistic, or have a panic attack, or maybe both, not necessarily in that order.

The only reason Y/N isn’t smothering him like Hell right now is because she thinks it would probably annoy him. _Thinks_. He’d actually really enjoy it, but he won’t admit that to himself let alone her.

The ice pack was, unsurprisingly, shockingly cold against Sherlock's face. It feels like your mouth does if you chew extra-minty gum then drink water. He’d made a hissing sound as Y/N gently, so gently, pressed it to his skin, a narrow rushing of air through his teeth and tongue. Y/N had grimaced apologetically and uttered ‘sorry’ several times as if she was opening his palm, pressing the words into the centre, and closing it up again, even though it wasn’t even her fault. Little gifts of empathy.

“It’s fine,” Sherlock said back, realising with a sinking feeling that he’d left his cake on the other side of the room. 

He’d expected Y/N to pass him the ice pack then continue with what she was doing. She didn't, though, much to Sherlock's delight. She cupped his chin with her other hand, curling one finger under it and using the gentle hold to tilt his head back and slightly to the side. She was inspecting him, removing the ice pack enough to assess the damage. The touch was gentle. A stark contrast to the ways people normally treat him. It made Sherlock have to remind himself to breathe---not that that helped; Y/N smells nice, the scent sort of drowning him but he didn't mind.

“It’s not bleeding, which is good," Y/N said distractedly. She could probably let him go now, but she's still supporting his skull, sort of stroking the side of Sherlock's face with the pad of her thumb.

Sherlock was finding it difficult to keep his eyes open.

"He didn’t break the skin.”

“I was lucky he wasn’t left-handed; he had a ring on that one.”

Y/N made a humming sound in her throat because the way she saw it there was nothing lucky about her best friend being punched in the face. Her eyes slid from running along the length of Sherlock’s cheekbone to his bespattered shirt. The stains were beginning to go brown; the life trickling from the blood after so long separated from a body. “Do you want me to get you a new shirt?”

Sherlock wanted to say ‘no, stay,’ because her hands gently cradling his head was the kindest touch he’d received in quite some time. “Okay, thank you.”

Y/N released his jawline slowly because he’d given some of the weight of his head into Y/N’s care. She made sure the hand he’d lifted to take the ice pack was in place before letting that go too, the entire process of pulling away from him slow and gentle, like forcing the petals of a flower apart that isn't quite ready to bloom.

Sherlock remained where Y/N had put him, holding the bag of, well, it's mostly slush now, to his wounded cheek, and watched her leave the room. He wanted privacy while he removed his shirt, although he's not quite sure why; Y/N will still see his bare torso when she returns with a clean one. 

He fiddled with the buttons of his blood-stained shirt with one hand and managed to shrug it off, leaving it on the table. He intends to wash it later---dunk it in some cold water---but the stains had dried long ago; another few minutes won't hurt.

He waited for Y/N to return. He expected her to be back by now, and was trying his best not to look shy about being half-naked. He hoped Y/N wouldn't judge him harshly for...well, for anything. For his pasty white skin the colour of tissue paper. For the fact that his muscles aren't utterly chiselled like those men on the covers of magazines. That, over Christmas, he'd gained the tiniest bit of softness in the centre of his stomach and it hasn't really gone away.

Despite lack of shredded-ness, Lestrade and John had pointed out how much healthier Sherlock looks now. Well, Lestrade had declared he 'Doesn't look like such a rake anymore' while giving him a hefty pat between his less-prominent shoulderblades, and John had said he 'Looks well taken care of'. Although slightly cryptic, their message was clear: Sherlock has evolved from skeletal to...average. Maybe a little better than average. He looks like someone that is, as John had put it: 'well taken care of'. Someone who gets enough exercise and enough sleep and enough everything else a person needs to function within usual parameters. Someone whose face regularly splits into a grin. 

Sherlock knew people often get that way when they are in a relationship. He knew this because---since he'd shifted from lanky to lithe---several people at Scotland yeard had asked him if he was in one. He'd furrowed his brow at them, and shook his head, confused at first, but then after much time spent examining himself in the bathroom mirror, he sort of understood their assumption. He looked how John had looked when he'd moved out with his girlfriend. Well, a taller, more athletic version of him, but the same key elements were there:

The subtle curves of muscle and slight amounts of softness replacing hollows and knobbly bones. 

The crinkles in the corners of his eyes from laughing and chatting through a smile. 

The posture straightened with confidence, a self-assuredness that can only come from knowing that you're adored. 

He'd smoothly transitioned from wrangly youth to a fully-grown, domestic man. 

That's what happens when people enter a stable, beneficial, happy relationship. They get happy. Less tense. A little bit lazy. _Comfortable_ , John defensively corrected when Sherlock made a fond little jab at his new physique all those months ago.

Now Sherlock's the one that seems to have 'settled down' and gotten 'comfortable', he realised bashfully as he let his spine sink into his chair a little more. He's not bashful just because he's a bit softer now than he used to be (both physically and mentally) but because the very fact that he'd gone through this change is pathetically ironic: 

Yes, he's settled down, he knew that now. He's settled down with Y/N. 

But they're not even dating.

By this time, several minutes had dripped by, the long-hand of the wall clock sliding over the first-minute mark, then the second. The kitchen is cold, and Sherlock felt a shiver bristle down his spine, his exposed torso blossoming with goosebumps. 

By the time three minutes had gone by, Sherlock called out---in a teasing tone---to the person he's settled down with but is not dating:

"Have you gotten lost?"

But he got no answer. 


	5. Chapter 5

Y/N had entered Sherlock's bedroom casually, and gravitated straight to the chunky old wardrobe in the corner of the room. 

Sherlock's room is simple and practical, with a few personal treasures dotted here and there, but, ultimately, nothing Y/N hadn't already seen before. She's been here many times, for various reasons---usually to wake her flatmate up for breakfast or because he'd forgotten he'd made an appointment with a client. She also strays into his space when she's just plain bored; seeking him out just as something to do. 

Basically; Sherlock's bedroom is well-charted territory. He'd let her explore to her hearts content a while ago, and doesn't mind her popping by (so long as she knocks first). So Y/N was working on autopilot, mainly, as she unhooked a hanger from the wardrobe and turned around to head back to the kitchen. But then something caught her eye, something she hadn't seen before.

A white triangle was poking out from under Sherlock's bed.

Y/N stepped closer and found the triangle to be some sort of paper. It's thick, more like card than paper, and textured, the colour not quite pure, more like the off-white of your teeth. 

It's sketching paper, Y/N realised upon further inspection. Curious, and checking that the door frame was empty of all Sherlocks, she set the clean shirt on the bed and knelt down by the piece of card. 

Giving it a gentle pull, she found---as suspected---it to be just _part_ of a much larger piece of sketching paper. And on it was…

Her. 

Well, a romanticised, beautified version of her.

The card was A3, the picture of Y/N blown up so that her head and shoulders filled it. She was smiling but looking down. She didn't look like she was posing for the photograph, it was almost as though she's been caught unawares; laughing at something on her phone or in a book she's reading out of shot. 

Why is it in black and white?

Then Y/N caught on. It's not a photo. It's a drawing.

She nearly dropped it the few centimetres she'd lifted it from the floor, but managed to hold onto it; curiosity tightening her grip. She couldn't let it go. It was too... 

beautiful. 

Breathtaking. 

Literally breathtaking: she can't breathe, and remembered, suddenly, that that's something she should be doing. She let the air she'd been holding in slide from her lips in a trembling breath. They're parted in wonder, or awe, or fear, she didn't know what it was but it was making her stomach flop around her abdomen like a fish out of water.

There's another sheet under this one, and she tugs it all the way out from under the bed. Another comes with it, caught between it and _another_ sheet, she's sliding piece of paper after piece of paper from the bed like it's a giant, silent printer, the only sound being her own too-quick breaths.

…

Concerned, now, and cold, Sherlock stood from his chair and wandered to his bedroom. Had Y/N passed out, somehow? Had she gotten distracted by a photo on the dresser she hadn't noticed before? He hoped it wasn't that one of him (seven) and Mycroft (fourteen) in their school uniforms. It was taken in summer and featured a pair of rather embarrassing shorts, and a goofy grin (well, on Sherlock's part; Mycroft's mouth was a perfect example of a line).

What's taking Y/N so long to walk five meters down the hall, select a shirt, and return so that he could cover his chilly shoulders?

As Sherlock approached the open door, he could see the top of Y/N's head; it appeared to be bowed to the carpet. 

Yes, she's crouching on the ground by his bed, staring down at something on the floor. Puzzled, he stepped closer, then halted when he was level with the door jamb. 

The blood dried inside of him, crumbled, and he nearly fell to pieces where he stood.

Y/N had seen him approach and dragged her gaze from the masses of drawings before her. She met Sherlock's eyes. They were wide like those of a man staring down the barrel of a gun. 

He'd stopped breathing.

"...These are me."

Sherlock had to swallow several times before that lump in his throat would go down enough to let him speak, and, even when he did, it was in a tone small and shaky. "You weren't supposed to know about them."

But that just made him sound shadier, he realised, more like the creep that he is. He’s squeezing one hand into a fist; a subconscious gesture, the hard ridges of his nails biting into the delicate skin of his palm. He squeezes harder and it smarts, a sharp little scream of nerve cells. He feels he deserves it.

Y/N ducked her head again to leaf through a few of the pictures. They're spread around her---'A Beautiful Mind' style, as if they're newspaper trimmings she was sifting for codes. 

There are loads of them. Hundreds, maybe. They're not all on A3 card, some are on A4, A5, normal printer-paper, on napkins, little torn snippets of paper, sketched onto the backs of receipts, train ticket stubs---

Sherlock had drawn them, Y/N had pieced that much together now. He had to have done, no one else knows her this intimately; sees her laughing sleepily at the television late at night, clutching a hot drink in both hands at the end of a long day---

"They're me---" Y/N said again, moving some aside, flipping them over to find more on the back, her eyes, her mouth, her hand holding things---books, her phone, food---or resting atop other things---tabletops, the arm of a chair---her own legs neatly curled against her chest. "---But they don't look like me." 

When Sherlock remained silent, she seemed to suddenly worry she'd insulted him. 

"I don't mean it like that. I don't mean they're not good. They're good, they're...Jesus, Sherlock, they're really really good."

Sherlock remained motionless. He probably couldn't move if he tried. He's like a hare in the middle of the road as a car hurtles towards him with its headlights on full beam.

"I just mean...they're _of_ me but they don't _look_ like me. I don't look like that."

Sherlock knew he had to say something. He had to at least do something, run away, take in a breath, or just blink at the very least. "I drew what I saw," he managed tentatively, pushing the words from his chest. 

He just stood there, gripping the door jamb with one hand as Y/N leafed through more of his drawings. They're all bare and vulnerable on the floor, bare and vulnerable like Sherlock is right now (and not just because he's still standing there without a shirt).

There's a long silence as Y/N picks up a napkin with a single line on it; the sweeping curve of her shoulder, leading up to the top of her head. 

A full, detailed and shaded A3 sketch of her cooking something in a pan over the stove, her hip jutting out to lean against the counter. 

An A5 page clearly torn from a notebook, caked in biro scribbles that somehow form to make a perfect rendition of her face, split open with a smile.

...

She’d remained in some kind of rivery for several minutes, now. That’s several minutes---Sherlock contemplated with a knot in his stomach---that she _hasn’t_ attacked him. She could have done---he’s right there, his tissue paper skin exposed and prickled from the cold. If she'd have attacked him, he would have let her. He wouldn't have dodged a hefty kick, or shielded his face from a flailing fist. He would have just stood there and accepted it.

But she doesn’t seem like she’s going to attack him. She doesn’t even seem angry. Just confused. Puzzled, like she’s confronted with a difficult math problem. If she was angry, Sherlock would know. He’d be able to tell because he'd sketched her face enough times to know what the tensing of each muscle means, the rising of her eyebrows or the pursing of her lips. And because he loves her.

Tentatively, he took a step into the room. A tiny one, not even lifting his socked feet from the floor. He just edged them slightly forwards, feeling the friction between each material, the coarse carpet dragging at the fibres. 

When Y/N didn’t react---just lifted a picture of her hand curled about a pencil---Sherlock deemed it safe and took another step closer to the bed. Y/N had left his clean shirt there, spread over the duvet, discarded and forgotten. He reached out a hand and snatched it up, slipping his arms quickly into its silky embrace. He didn’t bother to do up the buttons, just tugged it firmly around himself like a cloak, as if he hoped he’d turn invisible if he wrapped it tightly enough.

Y/N still hasn’t moved or even registered his presence. She let him pass by her quietly as though he really had turned transparent, let him come around to stand by her side. H crouched down when she didn’t flinch at his proximity, hesitantly folding one leg neatly over the other. He knows he has to explain himself and he’d rather do it honestly, face to face. Not by the door, not looking as though he hopes to run for the hills; even if that is what he really wants to do, more than anything. 

Well, not more than anything. There are several things he’d like to do more than that, but knew he could not. Especially not now. Not after this.

He's unusually small, cross-legged on the ground. Like a child who knew they’d done something wrong.

Y/N’s eyes are now sliding along the curves of that first image; the head-and-shoulders sketch spread over an A3 rectangle of card. The one she’d thought was a photograph. 

After some time, she muttered quietly: "I can't get over how beautiful they are."

Sherlock licked his lips. His mouth is arid but his hands are clammy and he wipes them on the fabric of his trousers. One of his palms is red with four painful little lines pressed into one of the creases. Meekly: “Are you angry?”

Y/N looked at him, met his eyes for the first time in a while. Her eyebrows have risen an inch up her forehead. “Angry? Why would I be angry?” She gestures at the ring of paper spread about them, almost encapsulating them both in a little ring of carpet. “These are…”

Her sentence trails off and Sherlock says nothing. Y/N noticed a piece of paper she hadn’t seen before and tugged it free from the pile. It’s a letter from the bank, Sherlock’s monthly statement, the familiar blue Barclay’s logo printed proudly at the top. A gash of graphite is showing through the blocky paragraphs and Y/N turns it over. On the back is---predictably---a drawing of her, but in this one, she isn’t wearing clothes. Or if she is it’s a shoulderless dress or maybe a tank top. The drawing pitters out just after her bare collarbones. 

There’s a harsh line straight through the middle.

“You crossed this one out,” Y/N said, still holding it. In the picture, she’s smiling straight at the viewer, as if into the friendly eyes of a loved one. She looks very beautiful. 

Sherlock is red, and is glad she isn’t looking at him. The red goes right from his cheeks down his neck and pools about his chest. He still hasn’t done up his shirt buttons. Maybe he’s forgotten; there are more pressing things at hand, like his collapsing relationship, the world as he knew it tumbling in planks around him. 

When he spoke, he had the nervous air of a man about to pop his head in a tiger’s mouth for a bet. “ I…it was supposed to be a...you know...a nude. But I stopped. I know these drawings are like something a serial killer would do, I'm not that crazy, I do know roughly where to draw the line.” 

“You shouldn't have,” Y/N said. “Drawn the line, I mean. The real line, this one, through the picture.” She traced the pad of her finger down it tenderly, as though it’s a scar on her lover. “It looks like it was going to be really good.”

Sherlock didn’t know what to say to that. He swallowed. He’d done a lot of that in the past ten minutes which surprised him because his mouth seemed to have stopped producing saliva. “It's pencil. I can erase it if you want.”

Embarrassment, or shame, or something else similar finally spurred him into motion and he started collecting them up, heaping the pictures into his arms. “You should---now that you know about these---you should probably keep them.” Some were spilling free, fluttering back to the floor to lay exposed before their eyes. It was like a metaphor, in a way:

The pictures and Sherlock’s secret can no longer be contained. 

“It would be weird for you, knowing that I have them.” He pushed them to Y/N’s arms and she blinked at him.

“I can keep them?”

“Yes.” There’s a friction to his voice, grave and defeated like a wet stone being dragged across a large rock. “I’d completely understand if you threw them away---”

But Y/N clutched them defensively to her chest. “No, I'm keeping them.”

This makes Sherlock’s brow pull together like a stitch tugging at two pieces of material, but Y/N is too busy to notice. She’d placed the stack of various papers, cards and---in a few cases---tissue paper onto her lap and is now gently teasing them into an orderly pile, lining up the edges and angling the corners so they all pointed squarely in four directions. 

When she was satisfied, she put them aside, setting them softly onto the floor by her left ankle and turned her attention back to Sherlock. It bore into him like a microscope; he felt magnified, scrutinize; as if he was being examined. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Y/N asked, which, in itself, is technically already a question. 

Sherlock would usually have pointed this out, playfully try to wind her up a little bit, but he didn’t this time. It saddened him to realise he'll probably never be able to again. Y/N may not seem to mind the drawings but surely their relationship will never be the same again. He nodded. “Anything.”

“Tell me...Why?”

Tipping his head to the side. “Why what?”

Y/N motioned at the pile of drawings, the stack thick and uneven and pale; like a shoddy building days away from being knocked down to make way for a car park. 

Well, that’s how Sherlock saw it. 

“Why did you do this? Why are they all me? I mean, there's loads of them, they must have taken hours, months---”

“I like drawing,” Sherlock cut her off, not wanting to hear anymore. He doesn’t want to hear her spell out his secret, perverted hobby in detail; it made him feel like he might be sick. Even the few words she had already said were too much. He wanted to forget them so buried them under more words: “You're a good person to draw because I live with you so I know you well enough to draw you from memory. Mostly.” 

Y/N is looking at him expectantly. She knows there’s more. He just needs to find the courage to give it to her, to feed her that last little sentence and hope she doesn’t spit it out.

“....And you're pretty.”


	6. Chapter 6

Sherlock takes pride in his ability to plan ahead. He’s very good at it. His brain works like a computer, able to simulate situations, play out different scenarios, watch them through like a film. He likes to enter every situation knowing roughly what’s going to happen, and for every action, he usually predicts at least eight possible outcomes. It makes him feel safe; predictability like a warm, heavy blanket wrapped about his shoulders, foresight like a soothing hand gently stroking his easily-frayed nerves. 

For this situation, however, he had no idea what was going to happen. He’d never tried to conceive what sequence of events might be triggered by his secrets ever getting out, mainly because he’d hoped that would never happen. He hadn’t seen a  _ need _ to plan ahead---to ready himself---because him telling Y/N he’s utterly head-over-heels in love with her would never, under any circumstances, happen. Ever. 

Well, that's what he'd hoped, anyway.

But now he’s called her pretty, to her  _ face.  _ He’s admitted that he finds her attractive, handed one of his secrets over, and Sherlock’s brain is frantically trying to predict what might happen next. 

Surely this day will end with him being hospitalised? 

Or bankrupt? 

Or with a criminal record stained with that dirty word, all grotesque and repellent;  _ ‘ASSAULT’.  _

He’d sketched his female flatmate without her knowledge, obsessed over her---basically. How many hours has he spent just staring her? Memorising every line, ever, curve, every dip and shadow and---

She doesn’t seem to be as angry about the drawings as he thought she’d be. 

When Sherlock had walked in and seen them spread out over Y/N's lap, he’d already started wondering what song his parents would play at his funeral. Something terrible, presumably. Although, he’d noted, that probably doesn’t really matter because it’s not like there will be many people to witness it; he guessed his funeral party would consist of only about five individuals; three will be relatives and the other two will only be there to make sure he’s actually dead. 

But he’s not dead. He’s still very much alive, he can tell because his heart is throwing itself about his ribcage as if it wants to escape. Y/N hasn’t taken her soft, pretty little hands and throttled him, or picked up some kind of blunt, heavy instrument and beaten him to death with it. He won’t have to be walked down the centre of a church in a box to the sound of Eric Clapton---at least not soon, anyway. 

Surely if the drawings aren’t some form of offence, his attraction  _ is _ . A man like  _ him _ , playing host to a crush on a woman like Y/N?  _ Any _ woman? Who gave him the right? He doesn't  _ deserve _ \---

Why hadn’t he tried to  _ stop _ himself? Why hadn’t he done anything about it? When that shy little sapling started to sprout deep within his heart, why hadn’t he crushed it underfoot like any respectable gentleman---respectable  _ human being _ \---would and should have done? He’d let it fester from mild infatuation to a crush to full-on love. That one stupid tiny sapling had grown and multiplied and expand and now its an entire garden; blossoms of endearment blooming in his lungs, vines of attachment winding in and out of ribs like a trellis.

Selfishness, that’s why he hadn’t put a stop to it. He’d noticed how his chest would do a little fluttery thing every time Y/N smiled at him, how her casual touch would leave his hungry skin prickling. He’d noticed how picturing Y/N's lips pressing a soft kiss to his cheek, his neck, his belly---down lower--- had set his whole body on fire and he’d---God dammit---he’d  _ liked  _ it _.  _ And fantasising about  _ him _ dotting kisses all over  _ her _ body? Well, that felt so absolutely heavenly he’d had to take a shower so cold his toes turned blue.

He couldn’t bring himself to kill that feeling. Tranquilise it with frigid water, yes, but kill it altogether? Snuff it out? Exterminate it as if it were mere vermin? To do so would be wrong---morally and objectively---like drowning a newborn kitten or tearing off a ladybird’s wing. 

Although, he thought bitterly, he kind of  _ wishes _ he’d killed it right about now. He wished he’d done it months ago. All those times he pulled a piece of paper towards himself, plucked up a pen in one hand and started those first few lines; the basic shape of Y/N’s face, her pose, her gesture, he’d told himself  _ ‘This is the last one.’  _ Like someone trying to finally get around to starting a diet or wean themselves off caffeine or alcohol:  _ ‘This is it now. No more after this.’  _ But he didn’t stop, couldn’t and now look. 

He’s been discovered.

He’s still sitting there, on the carpet, watching the woman he loves digest the syllables he’d fed her. Only half an hour ago all his secrets had been safely stuffed away in his pockets. Now they’re spilt everywhere. He feels like he's just fallen over and dropped them; like a man carrying a box of dirty films who trips and they all fall out onto the sidewalk for everyone to see. It had happened so quickly:  _ ‘You’re pretty’ _ , he’d never admitted to finding anyone pretty in his  _ life--- _ he hadn’t  _ prepared _ for this---

“What?” Y/N asked.

That's it; the moment he'd been waiting for; her reaction. The moment that defines the future of their relationship; will they part as awkward acquaintances? Or will Y/N use Sherlock's bedside lamp to send him to the River Styx?

He...couldn't tell. Y/N sounded like...well, she’d sounded like she hadn’t heard him. But she definitely  _ had _ heard him, she’s right there. They’re so close together her knees are almost touching his, bridging the gap between them. Sherlock suddenly got the strong urge to shuffle backwards a bit; he’s too close. 

Despite having absolutely no idea of what would happen, he hadn’t thought that what would happen would be  _ that. _

“You're pretty,” Sherlock stated again, carefully. It’s too late to back out now. And if Y/N is going to murder and or file charges against him for sketching her likeness in secret over and over he might as well explain to her  _ why _ he did it. 

Swallowing what little saliva he had, Sherlock continued bravely: “I like to draw what I find beautiful. When I was younger it was butterflies, moths, birds, buildings. A few years ago it was things I saw through my microscope. Cells, etcetera. Now it's you." He'd lowered his eyes to his hands and muttered into them: "Since you moved in it's been you.”

When he dared to glance through the curls of his fringe at Y/N's reaction, he saw not embarrassment, not disgust or discomfort, but...disbelief. 

"You don't have to lie, Sherlock, I found your stash of drawings, I'm fine with it, you don't need to use flattery to---"

"I wasn't lying, I was trying to tell you how I feel about you," he snapped, almost curtly. This isn't the reaction he'd expected. He thought she'd report him to somewhere, move out, bruise the other side of his face---but not believing him at all? To think he's  _ lying  _ about his attraction---

Y/N appeared to catch on, Sherlock’s clipped tone and general, terrified demeanour seemed to make her realise he was serious. Her eyes have gone all wide. “...How  _ do _ you feel about me?”

Sherlock played those six words over in his head again, combing them for a tone, a hint at what Y/N might be thinking. Had she asked tentatively? Did she sound scared of the answer? Did she sound like she was mentally measuring how long it would take her to sprint to the door?

No, she’d sounded...curious. Was that curiosity? Or is Sherlock’s poor, lonely heart just desperately scrabbling at any slight smidgen of hope it can find?

He licked his lips. He’s surprised his voice is still working at all, seeing as everything from his tongue downwards is as dry as sandpaper. He half expected to try push some syllables through his vocal cords only for them to make a noise like a gust of wind whistling through a grate; like a broken air conditioning unit. Except he isn’t a machine, he’s a red-blooded, completely love-sick, touch-starved man, and he isn’t cold anymore, he’s burning hot with a blush as he hesitantly mutters:

“Lots of things. Mainly... fondness. Attraction." He'd just stuttered. Since when does he stutter? "But there's other stuff too. Like...I'd like to kiss you. You to kiss me.” That blush is trickling down his body as if raspberry-coloured paint had been poured on his head. “Well, I’d like to do a bit more than---”

Y/N had pushed herself onto her knees and shuffled closer to him and he bit off the end of that sentence quickly, clamping his mouth tight shut, his eyes widening as he watched her. She kept getting closer until the soft curve of her breasts were nearly nudging against his chest and Sherlock----in a confusing state of fear and arousal---leaned backwards, flinching away as if he was looking directly at the sun.

But she kept getting closer, so he kept falling further and further back until his shoulder blades touched down on the carpet. He’d told himself he deserves whatever physical punishment Y/N throws his way, and yet---now the time has come to receive it---he can’t help but cower. He’s turning his head, not even in preparation of the pain, but because he doesn’t want to have to look at Y/N’s features---those usually soft, genial, subtle features he’s so in love with---contorted into rage and abhorrence. 

He squeezed his eyes tight shut as she leaned over him, waiting for that white-hot flash of a punch to land squarely on his not-already-bruised cheek---

But nothing happened. 

Cautiously, Sherlock peeked out from below his eyelids. 

Y/N is almost crawling over him (which would make his skin tingle under any other circumstances), her face written with…

Confusion. Not anger, not rage, not with that look people get behind their pupils as they’re calculating just about where they want their fist to meet with your face.

_ ‘Yes, definitely confusion,’ _ Sherlock thought from where he’s laying on the ground. It's scary being on the ground. He's too vulnerable, too small. It's too humiliating.

Y/N’s brow is pulled together above her nose like there’s a stitch there that had been tugged too tightly. She’s looking down at Sherlock’s expression, her eyes following the line of his alarmed frown with puzzled curiosity. 

“Why are you wincing?” She asked, the words falling from her mouth and landing on Sherlock’s face. A piece of her hair has fallen from behind her ear. If Sherlock wasn’t petrified like a rabbit before a fox, he’d reach out and gently stroke it back behind her helix. He’d always wanted to do that; tenderly touch her just because he could. But now his hands are shamefully tucked up to his chest, his body subconsciously shielding his already wounded heart.

He cleared his throat, hoping it would sound more manly than his current position looked: “That  _ is _ the usual reaction to being hit.” 

“What?! I’m not going to hit you! Why would I hit you?”

Sherlock’s head tipped to one side. What the Hell is going on? He gestured at the pictures piled up by the bed. Uncertainly: “...Because of that?” 

He still wants her to hit him, he’s almost annoyed that she hasn’t yet. It wouldn’t make up for what he’d done, but it would be good for the both of them, Sherlock had decided; level the playing field a bit:  _ ‘I stalked you, you beat me up, shall we call it a draw and continue with our lives?’ _

Then something occurred to him: “You’re... _ not _ going to hit me?” 

Y/N looked, quite frankly, appalled. “Jesus, Sherlock no, I’d never---how could you even think I’d---? God, I was going to kiss you!”

Every cog in Sherlock’s brain ground to a halt. He stared up at Y/N, not even daring to blink in case this was some kind of miraculous dream he didn’t want to wake from. 

Voice wobblier than he’d like it to be: “Kiss me? Why?” Even mentioning it---just the very  _ idea _ of getting to kiss someone---sent a dart of sensation right through to him.

Y/N looked confused. “You just said you wanted me to. Sorry, did I get it wrong?”

Sherlock shook his head, feeling the coarse fibres of the carpet against the back of his skull. Quietly, averting his gaze shamefully: “No, you didn’t get it wrong.” She’d gotten it so  _ right _ . He wants Y/N’s affection--- _ craves _ it---so much it’s, quite frankly, embarrassing.

Shoulders visibly loosening with relief, Y/N smiled, smooth wedges of her teeth exposed, her eyes pushed into pretty little crescent moons. She seemed to be waiting for something, watching the man below her expectantly.

But Sherlock still hadn’t moved. He hadn’t taken the hint, and Y/N’s tongue flicked across her lips to wet them. 

“...So... _ can _ I kiss you?” Y/N’s tongue is pink, all slick and appealing. It made the plush pads of her lips go shiny and glossy like honey drizzled over a strawberry. 

An error message popped up in Sherlock’s consciousness. 

There was a pause while he just blinked up at her, his jaw opening and closing but no words coming out. 

It was his body making it do that, not his brain. His body---his lust, his desire, his unsatisfied libido---is two steps ahead; it had processed Y/N’s request and wanted  _ very _ much to agree to it as soon as possible. His cheekbones had turned red with a flush, something stirring deep in his abdomen that made him his toes curl in his socks. Yes, his body understands, but his brain is still clogged up with a mixture of disbelief and euphoria; like a printer jammed with too many pieces of paper at once.

If someone was to walk into the room at that moment, they’d probably assume the two were reenacting a scene from A Little Mermaid; Sherlock, all sprawled on the floor gasping like a fish out of water, and Y/N crouched by his side, her expression written with concern as she watches him have some kind of stroke or aneurysm or perhaps both.

"You want to kiss me?" Sherlock eventually managed, the pale disks of his irises lighting up all of a sudden with hope and interest. His brain had caught up now. He’s finding it difficult not to grin. He's so drunk on relief and delight he's forgotten the humiliating fact that he's cowering on the floor. Almost.

Y/N gave a nod, her smile returning now that she knew she hadn’t utterly broken him. "Yes. In fact, I want to---how did you put it?" The corner of her lip curled. It made that tightening in Sherlock’s belly coil in on itself. "...Do a bit more than kiss you."

Sherlock can't say anything, but this time it's because he doesn’t know  _ what  _ to say. This isn’t how he saw this scenario playing out. It’s not how he saw  _ any _ scenario playing out. He's a bit out of breath and wildly unprepared and no matter how hard he tried not to he couldn’t seem to stop staring at Y/N’s mouth. 

He wanted to say something sexy. Something smooth and coy and masculine. He wanted to sit up in one lithe movement, confidently take the subtle curve of Y/N’s jaw, dip his head down and give her a kiss so wrought with potent male energy---

But he didn’t. Couldn’t, for several reasons. Instead, he asked, like the innocent, inexperienced bottom that he is:

"...So you still like me?"

Sherlock’s shirt had fallen open when he’d retreated against the floor’s comforting embrace, the pale plane of his torso exposed. He hadn’t realised, really, not until now; Y/N has placed one hand on his sternum, running a teasing circle onto the hard ridge of bone with the pad of her finger. It's brushing over his nerve endings, lighting them up one by one. It's a wonder he's not physically glowing. 

"Did you not hear what I just said?" She teased, her tone low and almost sensual, heat prickling from where she’s dragging her touch over Sherlock’s milky white skin. 

It’s suddenly very difficult for him to keep his eyes open. He'd just like to revel for a few moments in...what ever this is. Y/N's touch. Relief. He'd been so tightly wound for so long, so exhausted; secrets aren't that heavy on their own. They're like a glass of water; it doesn't matter if you see the glass as half-full or half-empty; if you carry it around for months it's going to weigh you down anyway. 

Now he's free of that weight.  _ And Y/N wants to kiss him.  _ Does she?

Sherlock swallowed and shifted against the floor, noting Y/N’s swelled pupils slide down and then up the exposed pillar of his midriff. So she’s not joking? This isn’t some cruel, twisted, confusing prank? She isn’t mad at him, or embarrassed by his devotion, his affection, his  _ obsession?  _ She  _ wants _ to kiss him? 

A whole new fear blossomed in Sherlock's brain space like a thorny rose, bursting his elation with harsh, prickly spines:

This is really happening. Well, it's  _ going _ to happen, and he has no idea what he’s doing.

Sherlock has waited for so long, dreamed of this moment since...well, since he’d first noticed that the pleasing shape of the female form could set off an excited little string of nerves within his body. But the years dribbled by, and he began to think that maybe---for him---women will be one of those things he can look at but never touch. Socially awkward by nature, he was in his final year of university before he'd plucked up the courage to enter the world of romance. Very few girls showed interest in the quiet, unpopular, analytical boy at the back of the lecture hall, and any conversations he  _ did _ manage to start didn't go well enough to lead to a second. He was twenty. Then twenty-five. By thirty he'd abandoned all hope of exploring his sexuality. 

But he shouldn't have doubted himself. He should have researched, should have prepared because, even though the wait was painfully long, he's finally allowed to touch. And not just anyone. Y/N. The only woman he's ever loved, who has ever let him get  _ close _ enough to love her.

“You look frightened again,” she pointed out patiently. She’d probably pieced together the reason for his discomfort. She knows he’s new to this, to everything, and although she doesn’t appear to think much of it either way, it’s painfully obvious that Sherlock is both intensely and deeply humiliated by it. 

As not to overwhelm him---probably---Y/N ceased her stroking. Sherlock wished she hadn’t; it had been so simple and yet, curiously, felt so good.

“I’m not frightened,” he snapped almost curtly, but the apprehensive edge to his voice gave away the fact that that was a lie. He wants her to touch him again. “I’m confused because I thought you’d be angry about the pictures but you weren’t, and then I thought you were going to hit me but you didn’t, and now you’re telling me you want to kiss me which is, quite frankly, baffling because  _ look  _ at me---”

He was cut off by Y/N's lips being pressed suddenly to his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is such a mood. Also sorry for the cliffhanger please don't kill me


	7. Chapter 7

Sherlock’s eyes slipped shut. 

The world fell away beneath him, his thoughts grinding to a sluggish, drugged halt. Like a busy train station during a power cut. Everything just… 

stopped.

Y/N had claimed his mouth almost possessively---to smother his self-deprecating ramblings, to soothe his churning thoughts, to shut him up. 

He’s shut up now. 

Y/N's mouth is warm. One of her hands is splayed at his chest, to steady herself, and that is warm too. All of it’s warm, and kind of wet, and it's stirring a sensation deep within his stomach and it feels  _ good _ .

Softly, Y/N sucked the full curve of Sherlock's lower lip, soft, helpless, and achingly innocent. She did it until he moaned weakly, a bolt of sensation shooting right down to his core. Every muscle in his sinewy body melted at once.

He is so full of things, of frayed nerves, of heightened, acute senses, of thoughts and emotions all entwined so nothing is simple. 

Almost nothing.  _ This _ is simple. Each subtle nudge of Y/N’s mouth is hitting a refresh button on Sherlock’s brain. He needed this. For so long he's needed this. 

Needed Y/N.

…

When Y/N broke the kiss, she didn't pull away, not completely. She stayed leaning over him, resting her forehead against his, Sherlock’s breathy, humid gasps pooling at her chin. 

"You think too much," she muttered, sort of explaining why she'd leapt on him so suddenly. It got her a chuckle, just a single, tumbling syllable, and one of Sherlock's hands slid up to curl into her hair, tugging her back down again.

He can’t stop kissing her. He’s not even shy anymore, just needy, just desperate, and utterly, completely addicted. 

Despite being the one to initiate the kiss, he automatically awarded leadership to Y/N. Yes, sweeping her off her feet would have been nice…

But he’s not really thinking about that right now. He's not really thinking about anything. He's very content just laying there, letting Y/N do what she wants with him. She seems to know what she's doing. Even if she didn't, would Sherlock even care? He's just happy she's touching him.

Y/N didn't need to coax his jaw open to deepen the kiss. It just fell open on its own, pliant, curious, hungry. Y/N pushed into his mouth, finding the slick, powerful heat of his tongue. This got a very ungentlemanly groan, the hand in Y/N's hair tightening. 

That  _ noise.  _

It's like a mountain crumbling to the ground. Him,  _ moaning _ , deep, unchained, rumblings purrs. They ripple through his body and into Y/N's, into the  _ floor,  _ the walls, shaking the whole flat. A series of vibrations more than a sound, tugging at parts of her she'd forgotten about. 

Everything she did got that noise. 

Her hand moving down the plane of his exposed torso to grip at his side.

Lightly flicking the roof of his mouth.

Easing it open a little further with her thumb at his chin.

Kissing Sherlock is different from kissing most men, Y/N thought. For a start, most men’s mouths are narrow and slightly hardened; a thin dash of lip framed by a strong, squared-off chin. Rugged. Masculine. 

But Sherlock’s lips aren’t like that at all. They’re a plush cupid’s bow; a delectable, biteable shape, full and curved and wide. They're probably red now, too, red and raw and kiss-bruised---and that's going to be their constant state from now on, Y/N decided.

And he’s  _ letting _ Y/N kiss him.  _ She _ is the one doing most of the kissing. Where other men are forceful and firm, taking what they want, claiming control in strong, dominant hands, Sherlock is soft. Undemanding. Well, he’s not soft; he’s just  _ gone _ soft; his usual confident, cocky attitude has fallen away and now he’s spread out on the floor, all six foot of his lean, impressive body utterly surrendering to Y/N’s touch. 

He  _ is _ kissing back, but not in that brazen, harsh way so typical of his gender. He’s all tentative presses and hesitant sweeps. It's refreshing, in a way, his innocence, the full level of his need searing Y/N to her core. Everything he's experiencing is new and exciting and he quivers every time the pad of Y/N's thumb rubs softly at his ribs, every time she gives him any kind of friction or pressure. 

Suddenly, when Y/N slid her whole hand forwards over the plane of his belly, he made a little bitten down sound, muscles contracted below that questioning touch. He pushed himself into a sitting position, taking Y/N with him, breaking the kiss to gulp in a breath. 

“Sorry,” Y/N apologised, retracting her hand as though she’d been burnt---is he sensitive there? Had she startled him? She shouldn’t have---

But Sherlock shook his head, nudging the side of Y/N’s nose with his own. “Don’t be.” The movement urged her head back so he could claim her lips again greedily. “I liked it.”

He did. The need to touch aches as deep as his bones. 

“More please.”

So Y/N gave him more. She can, now that he’s sitting up, one hand finding its way into his shirt and the other sliding into Sherlock’s curls. It gets her a soft, contented noise, and a little tilt of his head, a desperate plea for more. More prickly, tingling sensations trickling from his scalp, more kissing, more of Y/N’s other hand clutching into him; he doesn’t really mind. More everything. 

…

When Y/N breaks the kiss _properly_ , Sherlock is breathing---a bit heavily---through a smile. His hand at her head slipped down to hold her waist, keeping her close, so close he’s sure she can hear the frantic rhythm of his pulse. 

A current ran through them both now, he could feel it. Before, he’d thought it had just been within  _ him _ , in his body and only his, circulating like an electric pulse, persistent, deprived, pining. But now its passing though Y/N too, from his skin to hers, across the tiny slither of space between them. She’s completing the circuit and its some kind of tension, and it’s making it very hard not to pull her up against his chest.

A little while passed of just respiring; bringing in new air and expelling the old. Cooling down, like a pot of boiling water removed from the hob. 

It didn't help. That tension, that tautness like a net stretched between their bodies is showing no sign of lessening.

So Y/N said:  “Do you want to finish the picture?" she'd panted it, really, so close that her words grazed the lush contours of Sherlock’s mouth. Her tone is low, almost sultry, and it made that tightening in his belly double in on itself. 

It almost  _ hurts _ , but in a good way, like a stabbing of arousal, and he lets himself fall forwards to lean against the crook of Y/N’s shoulder. She supports his weight, the pad of her thumb rubbing a tender stroke onto the line of muscle below his ear. It’s relaxing, and he tries to centre his attention on that, the compassionate purity of it, rather than the rapidly building heat in his---everywhere. His very blood is thick with a deliciously sweet demand for more. It doesn’t help that Y/N smells inexplicably good. He wants to turn his head sideways a bit and mouth at her neck.

“What?” he managed to ask, his voice gritty and laden with friction. His vocal cords had done nothing but produce unrestrained happy sounds for the past ten minutes---an activity in which they are wildly out of practise. 

The corner of Y/N’s lips twitched. If he can be utterly undone with a simple kiss, how will he react to...other things? 

Easing out from Sherlock’s sort-of-cuddle, Y/N released him and moved away enough to retrieve the sheet of paper atop the pile of drawings by the bed. Sherlock let her go reluctantly, watching her with heavy-lidded eyes, all glassy and dazed. His hair sticking up, pale skin flushed with colour, his shirt still undone and hanging limply from his shoulders. He looks like he’s just stumbled in drunk.

“This.” Y/N handed him the A4 and he blinked at it. It’s the picture he’d crossed out, Y/N’s bare collarbones teasing his aroused body. “Do you want to finish it? I’ll pose for you.”

Sherlock met Y/N’s gaze, her having crawled back over to face him. Blushing, he muttered tentatively: “...I told you it was going to be a nude.”

The shy way Y/N’s smile curved at one side into a smirk made him have to moisten his lips. “I know.”

He went red to the roots of his hair. The idea was  _ appealing _ , yes,  _ beyond _ appealing. But he’s already a panting mess from being  _ kissed _ . If Y/N laid naked before him--- 

Swallowing thickly: “I’ve never…” 

Drawing someone naked would not be a problem. Back when he used to sneak to life-drawing sessions, Sherlock had drawn several people who had no clothes on, and done a very good job of it. It’s all just biology, after all, limbs, bodies, faces. He’d sat there for hours staring at bare skin and felt nothing---because life drawing sessions are a lot less sensual than you’d think. In fact, they’re the polar opposite of sexy. They’re basically a bunch of people getting slowly more frustrated because they can’t get that curve right, and their eraser keeps smudging, and why is that muscle on the model’s leg so hard to shade?

But drawing  _ Y/N _ naked? Both of them, alone? Now that he knows he can touch her? Her feminine curves and alluring skin all exposed, pricked with goosebumps---

His abdomen clenched. Again. “I mean, I’ve watched films, but I’ve never actually seen a woman that I’m attracted to...like that. In real life.” 

Y/N looked unphased. She shouldn’t be unphased, he thought, she should think him a pathetic mess, so he continued valiantly, wanting her to understand:

“I won’t be able to help getting---you know.” He made an awkward little gesturing motion to his now slightly uncomfortable dress trousers. The coarse, starchy cotton wasn't enough to hide the fact that his ridiculously-sensitive body had already gotten a little over-enthusiastic about its first kiss. 

Y/N chuckled, a little flurry of syllables like a swirl of autumn leaves. She touched a finger to Sherlock's chest, between his collarbones and drew it down, torturously slowly, to the dip of his navel. 

He shivered. 

“That is rather the point.” 

...

Y/N helped Sherlock off the floor, his legs spaghetti. He stood, then in the centre of his bedroom, not really sure what to do, or what happens next. He would be lying if he claimed not to have had dreams like this. Just to be sure this wasn't one of those, he, discreetly, edged a hand to his arm and gave it a sharp, hard pinch.

No. He's awake.

He'd put two and two together by now: Y/N questioning whether he would like to finish the drawing had been a smooth way of asking something else:

If he's ready for what comes  _ after _ the picture. 

Y/N had suggested he sketch her naked because it's---in a way---a form of foreplay; a bridge between their heated makeout session on the floor, and some kind of sex. 

Sherlock didn't need to ask himself whether he's ready for 'some kind of sex', especially as that sex would be with his best friend. She knows him. She'll take good care of him.

He has been ready for a very long time. 

Y/N was watching Sherlock expectantly and he just blinked back dully before realising she’s waiting for him to give her instructions. 

He raked his mind for some kind of direction, but it was slow to respond, all drugged and useless. That would have been frustrating had it not felt so goddamn good. He almost giggled giddily; look what love's done to him. 

When he still seemed sort of puzzled, just smiling like an idiot, Y/N helped him along. "So." She gave a shrug, gesturing to the room around them. “Where do you want me?”

Sherlock's cheekbones dappled crimson. He could think of several places.

The corners of her lips curling: “Not like that."

Hastily, his mouth opened, a shameful apology about to roll off his tongue, but Y/N added, flashing him a smile that made his knees turn to fudge:

"Not yet anyway."

…

It was decided that Y/N would pose on Sherlock’s bed, framed neatly by the dark length of the headboard. Sherlock would sit at the other end of the mattress with a pillow and a book in his lap to lean the paper on.

He scrambled about for a pencil, then arranged himself on the mattress, his pulse quickening with childish anticipation. He’d seen Titanic once and he's finding this whole thing to be quite romantic in a dream-come-true kind of way. He’s always been a fan of romance---mainly because he thought he’d never get any.

“You still with me?” Y/N teased, waking him from his stupor. She smiled when Sherlock gives her an embarrassed little nod. 

"Yes. I'm just sort of...in awe." He's loosened now; he's with his best friend, the familiar weight of a pencil in one hand, about to do one of his favourite activities---t hen what he's fairly sure will be his  _ new _ favourite activity. Life is good.

Y/N laughed. "I haven't even started getting undressed yet." She gravitated closer to the bed, taking off her socks with each step. Everything she did solidified the situation slightly, Sherlock noticed, the blurry, sated state Y/N's kiss had left him in dissipating. 

Nudging the door closed until the handle clicked.

_ She doesn't want their intimate time alone to be disturbed. _

Shutting down the glaring main bulb dangling from the ceiling, and clicking on the bedside lamp.

_ She's giving the room atmosphere. _

Bunching the frayed material of her socks down around her ankles, then slipping her feet from them, tossing them aside.

_ She's undressing for  _ him _. She wants to make him excited. _

Each moment brought everything into focus like a camera lens---made it more real---from a fuzzy fantasy, to vivid, physical reality. 

_ He gets to see Y/N naked.  _

_ Then she's going to--- _

Y/N can feel Sherlock's transparent eyes cutting inquisitively into her like a whetted blade as she undresses. Methodologically, she removes each garment, aware of his gaze, steady and interested. She took her time easing buttons and slipping fabric; playing with him, finding his desperate frustration amusing. 

Now only in her underwear, Y/N paused, noting Sherlock’s chest rising and falling with his quickened breaths. 

His pupils are so wide they’re drowning out their disk of molten silver. They slid languidly up the stretch of Y/N's legs and lingered purposefully over the swell of her hips. He's staring fixedly at the lacy band of her pants as if hoping he could eat through it just by concentrating hard enough.

She reached back, unfastened her bra, and dropped it to the floor.

The jut of Sherlock’s adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed roughly.

…

Sherlock has never really struggled to draw before but now. Sure, the initial stages of learning how exactly to transfer mind into matter had been a frustrating period of his life, but not  _ difficult.  _ He’d mainly spent that time sketching things from books, or the women in his mother’s fashion catalogues. Those women had been beautiful, yes, but, at the end of the day, they were still two dimensional; pin-pricks of ink clustered together to look like a person. An air-brushed, ethereal person, all rigid poses and constant, plastered-on smiles that look like they’d slip loose if you shook the page too hard. 

But Y/N is  _ real _ , and very naked, and she’s all sprawled out on Sherlock’s bed like butter on toast.  _ Her _ smile isn’t like the women’s in the magazines. It’s  _ Y/N’s _ smile, the one Sherlock had become so bafflingly fond of, and now it’s laced with a teasing note of wickedness; unchained female sensuality. 

She’s not a flat page in a magazine, or a series of harsh pixels on a screen. She’s soft and subtle and has texture, curves to hold and smother with your hands, lips--- she has scent that’ll cling to his duvet covers. She has mass and  _ taste--- _

Sherlock turned back to the paper on his lap with a silent groan in his chest. 

Y/N had gotten to pick the pose she took, so long as it roughly lined up with the position of her shoulders in the part of the sketch that’s already finished.  Because of this---because part of it is complete---she also got to choose her expression. She wanted it to be provocative. It wouldn’t affect the outcome of the image, she just did it because she liked how the solid dashes of Sherlock’s cheekbones flushed a shy pink every time he caught the fiery line of her sight. It was an easy look to give; all she had to do was mentally undress him. Picture his elegant structure, angular bones, sleek muscles moving under alabaster skin.

When she does eventually undress him---and she w _ ill--- _ she’s going to eat him alive.

Judging by the way he’s biting his lower lip so fetchingly, Sherlock knows this, and is more than looking forward to it.

…

Despite being utterly nude---probably the most vulnerable a human being can be---Y/N feels at-ease and untroubled. She’s not shy showing her body to Sherlock Holmes; his reaction banished all self-consciousness before it had even arrived. She's not bored either, even though her job is to mainly stay very still. She’s perfectly content to just observe the artist before her as he quietly goes about his work. 

It is funny, Y/N contemplated to herself, that the first time she gets to watch Sherlock draw, she’s barely paying attention at all. Well, she is paying attention, just not to  _ that _ part of it. She can’t see what’s on the paper he’s leaning over, not from her angle; lounging in a feline sort of way where his pillows would usually be.  She can’t watch the actual sketch take shape, so she watches Sherlock make it do so instead. 

The loose waves of his curls springing from his parting; how they fall about his face when he dips his head. 

Each gritty scrape of the graphite, sometimes a mere light brush, others stronger and laden with purpose. Y/N imagined the type of lines they produced in her mind, wondering if he’s using the sound or the give of the pencil to predict whether he’s using enough pressure for the stroke he wants to conceive.

The large, slender, cradle of his hand lightly teasing the direction of the instrument with well-practised precision and accuracy. 

Finesse. Everything Sherlock does is with finesse, his posture, the minute adjustments to the position of his arm, or the angle of the paper. Even the way he’s shyly blushing has an air of experience, as if he’s been doing it for most of his life.

The room is chilly, and Y/N can feel her bare skin tightening as the steamy heat of arousal slowly ebbs from her bloodstream. There’s no need to adjust the heating, though. It’s impossible to be uncomfortably cold whilst those eyes are on you. 

Sherlock had noticed the cold too, but not because his shirt is still hanging open, loose and forgotten, exposing a long column of pale skin that Y/N keeps staring at. No, he’d noticed the slight sharpness of the temperature because Y/N’s nipples had hardened to pink, tempting little pert buds. He spent two minutes trying to remember how to breathe.

Another reason for his heart making little leaps every now and again is because he’d so used to Y/N...not knowing he’s looking at her. She’s looking at him  _ now, _ and it keeps making him jump. He’ll raise his head---to make sure he’s getting everything right, the proportions, the shadows, the way the bedside light is falling onto her, etcetera---and become startled by her pupils trained on his.  By the fact that she knows exactly what he’s doing. 

Despite having full permission---she’s posing for him, for Christ's sake---he’s not used to it; to his secrets being out in the open. Although, t hey may be out in the open, but they don’t feel exposed. There’s no building sense of dread as if a hawk is going to swoop down at any moment and snatch them up with black talons.  No, what it actually feels like is as though a window has been opened. As if planks of sunlight are now falling into what used to be a sullen, shut-up and dusty room.

…

I’m not sure if you’ve ever done it, but drawing often takes a little while. And, due to the rather flustered artist, and nature of the picture, this particular drawing is taking even longer. Thus, naturally, a conversation was bound to blossom like mushrooms on a moist log. 

“The police sketch," Y/N said after some time. "That was you, wasn't it." It hadn't really been a question. She didn't need to be more specific, either.

Sherlock’s head is bowed to the paper. He’s trying to estimate the distance between the ridge of Y/N’s right shoulder and the sharp point of her elbow, but keeps overshooting. Whilst scrubbing at the extra few millimetres of graphite with the nub of an eraser: “Yes.”

“I asked you who drew it and you said a person upstairs.” 

The corner of Sherlock’s lip quirked up as he muttered into his lap: “That’s not technically a lie; I  _ was _ upstairs and I  _ am _ a person.” 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Y/N quipped, getting a little chuckle. It rolled up from his chest, almost as delicious as his moans of pleasure. Y/N shifted against the duvet and Sherlock’s grey eyes noticed. Seriously, now, all jokes metaphorically pushed aside: “Why did you keep it a secret? The fact that you can draw, I mean, not just the police sketch.” 

The wide line of Sherlock’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. 

Y/N watched his pale torso shift about between the two sides of his shirt; the furrows that formed behind his collarbones, the svelte shift of muscles. He’s softer than he used to be---now more strength than bone---softer and warmer to touch than most would think. 

“Because you would have asked me what it is I draw, and I would have had to show you those,” he tilted the bitten end of his pencil to the left, indicating to the pile of sketches still on the floor. Then he wavered. “...And I like to keep it to myself because I don't like people knowing that I waste my time.”

“It  _ isn’t--- _ ”

“It is, and I’m okay with that” he corrected, and he sounded like he was telling the truth. “I do it because I enjoy it.”

Gently: “If you are okay with it then why do you hide it?” Y/N fears she's pressing him, but he doesn’t seem to object. 

Sherlock has never been one to disparage curiosity.  “I have a reputation to uphold,” he said simply. “I usually have to dress, talk, and act a certain way so people take me seriously. It’s good for business.” His gaze keeps lingering on the stretch of Y/N’s legs now, and she can’t tell whether he’s not-so-discreetly admiring them, or if he’s just reached that part of the portrait. 

She doesn’t mind either way. “I appreciate the irony.”

This did make Sherlock raise his head, and he tipped it to the side curiously. “What irony?”

Y/N shrugged this time, and it made him blush.

He found it curious that even philosophical conversation and the passage of time isn't enough to extinguish that tingling sensation between his legs.

“How the world thinks you’re unfeeling and indifferent.”

With a small, hopeful edge: “Am I... _ not _ unfeeling and indifferent?” 

“Of course you’re not, you're the complete opposite. You care about everything. That's the irony."

When he still seemed confused, she said, sounding sad:

"I think people have told you you’re those things so many times, you’ve started to believe it, even if it’s not true.”

Quietly: “People always told me I have no heart.” The edge of Sherlock’s pretty mouth tugged into a brittle smile, and he added another sweeping line to his picture. “I once heard Sally and Anderson arguing over what’s in its place. Anderson suggested ice, but Sally thought its more like flint.”

The corners of Y/N’s eyes prickled. How could she be singed with arousal one minute, and teetering on the verge of tears the next? 

She moistened her lips. They still taste of Sherlock. “You’re not what they think you are. I don’t even think you’re what  _ you _ think you are. Because you're not actually a puzzle solver, really, are you? You do that because you get bored, not because you’re in love with it.”

Sherlock’s hand stopped nudging the tip of the pencil over the bump of Y/N’s knee. 

Cautiously, he picked up this observation, this shiny new perspective. Y/N had dropped it before him so simply---so easily---as if it didn’t rattle the very foundations of which his very sense of self had perched for so many years. He turned it over in his head, examined all the sides and angles.

It didn’t shock him. He feels as though he’s always been wearing a name badge--- _ SHERLOCK HOLMES; DETECTIVE--- _ but it’s actually just a sticker over the top of something else. Y/N has just peeled it off to reveal what’s underneath---

But there’s nothing there. It’s blank.

“...So...what am I?”  _ Am I anything? _

Y/N thought for a moment and then smiled. It was a nice smile, as if the conclusion she’d reached pleased her. “You're...an illustrator. And a musician. An actor.” Another few moments of contemplation, then, metaphorically, she wrote in that gap on his name badge simply:

“You're an artist.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sounds conclusive but there's another chapter don't worry. :-)
> 
> And look, guys, I get that their relationship is like 'rushed' or 'moving really fast' or whatever but think about it I mean poor Sherl has like been waiting so long man literally years just let the poor touch-starved guy get laid


	8. Chapter 8

Sherlock added a final little scuff of graphite to the paper before him, then raked it over one last time with his eyes. A smile curved his lips; he never thought he’d get to see this image completed. 

Plus, that’s Y/N’s body he’s staring at, and that flusters him like a schoolboy. His body _still_ hasn’t acclimated to Y/N’s nudity. Yes, it had settled slightly after the effect of her touch wore off, but now, with the knowledge of what’s to come, that buzzing sensation between his legs had returned with full force. 

“Oh, you can move now."

She grinned, pushing herself up into a sitting position. “It’s finished?”

“Yes.” Slowly, as though he approached something forbidden and dangerous, he crawled up the bed, taking a seat by Y/N’s side. Shyly, Sherlock transferred the paper over to her hands. “Here.”

He knows the drawing is good---if it isn’t good then it isn’t complete---but handing it over to the person featured in it set moths fluttering about his abdomen. Big moths, elephant hawk moths, all massive, dusty wings tickling the inside of his ribs. What if, for some reason, Y/N doesn’t like it? 

Of course she likes it.

Letting her body lean against Sherlock’s arm, Y/N’s gaze slid over the drawing, over her own face, her own body, immortalised in gritty flecks of grey. Some of the flecks are densely clustered to form umbrae, others sparse and few between to give the illusion of light, the rest arranged in crisp, delicate lines. Detailed. Smooth. Perfect. 

This picture is different from the others in Sherlock’s collection of Y/N (that is what it is; a collection. He’s accumulated snapshots of her expressions, her mannerisms, her features like a hoarder stock-pilling pretty bottle caps). It’s in the same style as most of them, shaped from the same material, and yet---even without colour---it is unmistakably an outlier. 

The first in many outliers. It marks the start of a new era, a cornerstone of some sort. Something has obviously changed in the way the artist views his subject. His work has taken a new direction.

Hunger, that’s what’s new. Unbridled, unrestrained desire. Everything about the sketch is moody, almost dark, Y/N’s body laid out what can only be described as provocatively. The very _way_ he’d pressed the pencil to the paper is different; all long, languid strokes and generously shaded shadows. 

Before, he’d sketched Y/N with guilty bashfulness, each picture innocent and tasteful; his restraint and respect betraying his love-sick heart. 

But he doesn’t have to chain up his lust anymore like a savage wolf, keep it concealed as though it’s an unsightly disease. No, now he can set his ardour free, and it has manifested itself in every stroke, Sherlock’s emotional state having leaked down the pencil and laced itself into his drawing.

If this is how Sherlock sees her, then Y/N likes it very much. Never before had she felt like such a woman, so wanted, so _needed._

“It’s beautiful,” She muttered, and Sherlock preened. 

“You think so?”

“Yes. It’s..breathtaking. Gorgeous..” 

Smiling bashfully, dipping his head to hide under his fringe. Meekly: "Yes, you are." 

This made Y/N laugh and she gave him a nudge from where she was still nestled up against his side. 

He swayed, utterly pliant. 

“Haha, very smooth,” she teased delicately, causing his blush to deepen by a few shades. 

It was making him dizzy, his blood rushing up to his face, and then pouring downstairs, only to clamber exhaustedly back up to his cheeks again. “Sorry. I don’t know how to...be sexy. Or do any of that stuff.” 

Y/N’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug, her bare skin sliding against the sleek material of Sherlock’s shirt-covered arm. She mentally cursed the fabric, that stupid little barrier between his firm knots of muscles and her prickling nerve endings. How long had she laid there daydreaming about those arms looped tight about her body? Too long. "You’re _already_ sexy. You don’t need to know how to do any of that stuff. I love you for _you_ , Sherlock."

Eyes widening: "...Love?" He choked it out, a shocked little cough rather than a question, and he felt Y/N stiffen beside him. 

She loves him? Someone is in _love_ with---? With _him?_

Sherlock had turned to meet Y/N’s eyes searchingly. The effect was startling, so crystalline, so pure, so transparent, it was almost as if she was staring right at Sherlock’s open, unprotected soul. 

Heating under his inquisitive gaze. “...I mean..." What's the use in denying it? Of course, there is the horrible chance that her forwardness might utterly startle the poor man, and subsequently blown her chances at any kind of romantic relationship with him---

But he hasn’t run away yet. He hadn't even run away when she'd found his pictures. He’s just looking at her, pupils all swelled up, two large wells of ink, his long legs tucked almost to his chin. 

How many people have told him they love him? 

"Of course I love you." She’d said it purposefully, firmly, as though she’s pressing it hard onto his memory to make it stick. 

When Y/N had kissed him earlier, she hadn’t really said anything, she’s just...kissed him. At the time, afterwards, and even now, Sherlock hadn't actually thought about what it meant. This is down to one simple reason: fear.

Because Y/N kissing him could have meant anything. She could have wanted him for the night, for the month, forever, or not at all. She might have just...pitied him, so gifted him with his first kiss just so she didn’t have to live with the depressing knowledge that he’d never had one. 

Preferring to live in ignorance, Sherlock just allowed it to happen, for once just going with the flow. He let life guide him along like a leaf adrift a lazy river and skirted around any doubts and questions that popped up along the way. Because even if Y/N only wants him for his body, for a fling, for the night, at least that's _something_.

But she doesn't want it for a fling. She…

"You love me?" He just muttered again stupidly. Not because he hadn't heard her, but because he was testing out how the syllables felt rolling off his tongue. 

They felt good. His face split open into a radiant smile. 

Y/N mirrored it unsteadily. "Couldn't you tell? I’d swoon every time you stood too close to me.” 

"...No."

Y/N gave him another nudge, teasing him gently. "Told you you're not a detective."

Sherlock nudged her back, both of them swaying like a misshapen newton’s cradle. "...Sometimes it's hard to tell. Like, I'd put your widened pupils down to low light, or your gentle touches as just...something you do to be friendly. You smile at everyone, you're kind to everyone, I just assumed you were just being those things with me too.”

“You saw but you did not believe.” 

He made a humming noise in his throat. “And to be fair, you also didn’t notice _I’d_ fallen for _you_ either.” 

“You’ve fallen for me?”

Sherlock tipped his head to the side inquisitively. He’d thought she knew. Everyone knew. Lestrade knew, Mycroft knew, Mrs Hudson knew. Even the person who’d moved in next door asked Sherlock how his wife is when he'd got the paper, and, after several confused moments, he’d realised she’d assumed he and Y/N were married. It was like ‘I LOVE Y/N’ was printed in HAUS Sans Extra Bold over the front of his shirt. Or someone had written it across his forehead in lipstick.

“Yes. I love you, Y/N. As much as someone like me is capable of loving another person.” 

Sherlock hadn’t said this in the hope that he’d get some kind of reward. He’d said it because...well, because everyone else seems to know it, apart from Y/N, and she’s the one that should know it most of all. His secret can't live in the dark forever, just manifesting quietly away in the shadows. And he hoped it might make her happy. When _Y/N_ had told _Sherlock_ she loves him, his torso had swelled with something warm and exciting. Like a sun being born in his chest cavity. He hoped Y/N would feel at least a fraction of that when _he_ told _her_ that he loves her back. 

Because he hadn’t said it in search of a reward, he hadn’t been expecting the kiss Y/N pressed to his lips. 

He hadn’t been expecting it, but that---by no means---meant it wasn’t welcome. He melted against her, every bone in his body dissolving. 

When she eased back from his soft, searching mouth, she took his jawline, tilting his head to caress a little circle around the bruise on his cheek. 

Somehow, Sherlock had forgotten it was even there. Y/N had numbed him.

"'Someone like you'?" Y/N breathed, her words more tactile than audible. "You always talk like you're incapable of love, of caring, of appreciating sentimental things, and I don't understand why. I mean, look at these." Her hand still holding Sherlock's sketch turned it to face him, but he barely noticed. 

She's naked and she's on his bed and she loves him and she's kissing him. He's just trying not to jump with a triumphant little whoop of joy.

"Look at how you see the world." Y/N tangled her fingers in his hair, bringing his head down so she could catch the curved shell of his ear between the rocky edge of her teeth. "Beautiful." She gave it a little nip and Sherlock groaned pitifully, seeking out her mouth again, scrambling for her hips with his hands. 

He found them, his innocent fingertips meeting the heat of Y/N's bare skin, sending his own blazing like a freshly stoked fire. His body seemed to like his hand being there very much; that dip of Y/N's waist followed by the feminine swell of bone and softness. He’d like to touch her breasts as well, touch all of her, but their position is too awkward, sitting up and kind of leaning into each other. Sherlock's trying to get closer, tugging Y/N's curves insistently up against his own as if she's the first taste of food he's had in months. 

As if reading what little thoughts he had, Y/N reached back to put the picture on the bedside table, blessing him with both her hands knotted tight in his curls. It made his jaw fall open, like a button had been pressed, and he felt the vague arch of Y/N's smile against his open mouth. 

"Interesting." She smirked. 

Unsteadily, because Y/N's nails were running over his scalp and sending prickling sensations right down to his toes: "What is?" 

"I was going to ask if this is okay." Another kiss to Sherlock’s ear, catching the lobe between her lips and a moan ran through him. "But I think I just answered my own question."

He chuckled, a low rumbling purr. It touched parts of Y/N so deep she’d thought they were inaccessible to anyone but herself; her soul, her essence, the very energy that deems her a living being. Secret things, non-material things, things no one should physically have the power to touch---

And yet Sherlock’s laugh dances over each of them like fingers simply strumming guitar strings. How? Does he _know_ he’s doing it? Is he doing it on _purpose?_ Can he actually feel Y/N’s soul, is he just playing with it, dipping his hand in and swirling it around just because it feels pleasant slipping between his fingers?

Y/N doesn't know it, but Sherlock is wondering the exact same thing about her. 

"Yes, it's ok,” Sherlock said, his head tilting automatically to grant Y/N more access to his neck. She’s at that stretch of muscle that runs down from the base of his ear and into the dip between his collarbones. “I like it.” It’s a simple touch, and yet arousal is already thick in his blood. “More please."

Through a smirk, Y/N continues her trail, taking her time to suck faint rosettes of colour up into his pearly white skin. Like raspberries in a bowl of milk, just below the surface, that creamy ghost of pink just about visible. He doesn’t taste sweet, though, he tastes of salt.

When Y/N touches on a tender spot, Sherlock makes a desperate kind of whimpering noise and drags her down onto the mattress. His body is between her thighs, now---or at least it will be. He’s propping himself up enough to stare down at her all spread out below him, his pupils wide and dark and glinting. They feasted on her, swept her face, deliberately pausing at her kiss-bruised mouth and the alluring column of her throat. And then her _chest---_

Y/N grinned up at him, curiosity the only thing preventing her from tugging his reassuring weight insistently down on top of her. “What?” She’s never seen him look like that. Hungry. His lips are tugged into a smile, but its a new smile, and she doesn’t really know what it means.

"You look nice.” His gaze slid languidly over Y/N’s breasts, then back up to meet her eyes. “Laying there." A little huff through his nose, technically a chuckle, but he couldn't get the air for it. “I can't believe." 

That isn’t a typographical error or a grammatical blunder. His sentence just...ended there. There wasn’t supposed to be anything taped to the rear of it. He just…

Can’t believe.

Y/N’s legs snaked around his narrow waist and brought his trouser-clad hips down to settle against the warmth between her bare thighs, the contact making a breathy moan tumble from both their open mouths. Curiously, Sherlock moved against that building point of warmth, breaking the kiss so his head could fall forwards against Y/N’s forehead while he caught his breath.

Minutes of exploration heated the brisk air around them, Y/N drawing muffled whimpers and soft moans from Sherlock’s throat. They’d switched positions a few times, rolling about on the bed in a euphoric state of play. When Y/N had pinned him to the mattress for the first time, the closeness, the press of another body against his, had made Sherlock gasp in surprise, his mouth dropping open at the foreign, sweet-hard pressure bearing down steadily against his hips. His body is so responsive, so sensitive, his reactions so unguarded, Y/N had to remind herself to be gentle. He’s new to it all so she must go slowly, but the way he hisses and arches up when she’s on top---and grinds down onto her when she’s on bottom---makes her want to do nothing but ravish his pretty body until they’re both dizzy. 

Although he has never been in a relationship before, Sherlock is not inexperienced at love. After all, he's been in love with Y/N for---well, for ages. He has all the places he wants to touch planned out. He'd sketched a lot of them many times, and mimicked the strokes of his pencil now with his lips, grazing Y/N's jaw, chin, stomach as if marking her with his touch. These places, these tender actions are not noted down---because he doesn’t need to remember them---they’re more...muscle memories, his body knowing what it wants to do and how it wants to do it. 

Most of them are utterly selfish, and yet Y/N seems to enjoy them immensely. 

Like dipping his head to catch her nipple between his lips, rubbing wetly over the pert bud until its glistening and shining. He hadn’t known that would feel good for her. He’d done it because...well, because he knew it would _definitely_ feel good for him. He’d been shocked, his movements hitching in almost comical surprise when Y/N arched up in answer, a moan rising from her lungs. 

That sound pooled in the pit of Sherlock’s belly, and he whined in helpless agitation. _Why_ is he still wearing trousers?

With one hand, he scrambled desperately at the buckle of his belt, Y/N mouthing at his jawline in a way that was distracting as it was encouraging. 

“Sure?” Y/N asked from below him, and he nodded, feeling the soft warmth of her fingers nudging his own out the way. She took over with calm competence, and, as soon as he was free, Sherlock shimmied off his trousers and shirt in a quick shuffling of fabric. 

And then Y/N’s bare body was up against his own. 

Well, most of it. His underwear was all that remained, that annoying slip of material between him and what he could only assume was the highest pleasure available to mankind. 

And then he stopped.

Y/N noticed, one of her hands had found its way to Sherlock’s chest and she held it there, splayed over the hard ridge of his sternum. His heartbeat flurried below her touch. “What’s wrong?” 

Bashfully: “I don’t know what I have to do.” 

The glow of the bedside light gave Y/N’s kind smile a tender edge, and she felt him loosen a little against her. “You don’t _have_ to do anything,” she said simply, giving him a little push. 

He seemed to understand what she wanted, because he went slack, letting her manoeuvre his back down onto the mattress. He shifted a bit, getting comfortable, looking up at Y/N with eyes wide and compliant. Both of his large hands came up to hold Y/N’s waist, and---when he gave them a little tug---she let her herself rest on him. He whimpered, and Y/N pressed a reassuring kiss to his chin, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. As if marking the points of a triangle that’s now faintly tingling. “You can stop me if you want.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” Sherlock said quickly, craving the slick wetness of her tongue, the taste of her, he curled one finger delicately under Y/N’s chin and connected their lips once more. He’s getting the hang of it now, seemingly noting what sets his own nerves alight and trying to spark the same in Y/N. He’s obviously doing a good job of it because she leaned into it, humming into his mouth. 

He ate it up with eagerness. The sounds she makes are so saccharine he could probably survive off of them alone. 

When Y/N broke the kiss he gave her a malcontent frown. 

"Sherlock," She said. His arousal had been nudging her insistently since their second kiss, and every moan he made only strengthened her desire to tend to it. There would be time for hours of learning every inch of each other's body later, but for now, he's waited long enough. "You don't have any protection, do you?"

He shook his head. “No,” he said it to Y/N’s parted lips rather than her eyes. He’s sort of….transfixed by them; by how his kisses have affected them. They’ve gone all lush and shiny. Her teeth caught the bottom one, and she bit it. 

"Nor do I. If I would’ve known we'd be doing this I’d have bought some.” 

Before Sherlock could wilt with disappointment, she kissed him again, a deep kiss that only dumped more fuel onto the furiously burning fire between his legs. Shouldn't she be _dousing_ it with cold water, seeing as they can't…?

When Y/N eased away from his mouth, she was grinning. “We'll do that another day. But for now..." Another kiss, shallow this time, like she's tracing the shape of his lips.

He made a pitiful little sound at the suspense, chasing her, wanting to deepen it, but she pulled away completely. 

"How about I do this instead?" Smoothly, she shifted her body to Sherlock’s side, one hand still submerged in his hair. He blinked up at her curiously, wondering what exactly it was that she'd---

Then he felt her palm press to his bare chest again. It was hot, not warm but _hot,_ sending each nerve into a euphoric little frenzy as she dragged it down by a few inches. The pad of her finger rubbed a soft circle onto the tender aureole of his nipple and his violently sensitive skin ached in answer, his muscles taught with the strangeness of being so intimately touched. 

“That’s---” He’d meant to say something along the lines of _‘That’s good,’_ but the words tripped and rolled over each other somewhere in his throat so just came out as a happy groan.

She laughed at him. “I haven't even started yet.” 

And she hadn’t. Y/N’s hand keeps getting lower, leaving a trail of prickly goosebumps in its wake, and Sherlock’s breath hitched as it reaches the plane of his stomach. 

He’d gone from looking at her with total absorption---fascinated curiosity written all over his alert features---to his head pushed back against the pillow, jaw slack, eyes having fluttered closed. 

All those months he'd spent clutching his secrets to his chest as if they were perverse, offputting, unacceptable burdens...they could have been doing _this?_ He'd kept them stuffed deep in his pockets like a lottery ticket he's ashamed he'd bought, not knowing that he'd won the jackpot. 

Y/N is hunting out, stimulating, his nerves with loving precision, her touch so light it almost tickles, just brushing the very surface of Sherlock’s desire with tantalising skill. He’s unashamedly moaning with need at _everything_ , and it’s making it very difficult to concentrate. Her hand is still getting lower and he wonders---drunkenly---if she’ll stop when she reaches his pants and draw her hand back up to begin the circuit again. Maybe she’s just appreciating him; giving him some kind of strange, wonderful massage.

That was his last coherent thought.

She didn’t stop. Where Sherlock saw the band of his underwear as a sort of finish line---because she wouldn’t go there, would she? Without protection, surely they would have no use for---

But Y/N saw it as a starting line, a beginning. Her hand just carried on going and slipped _underneath_ that band of elastic, down further until she’s cupping him.

Sherlock’s whole body went rigid. 

The tip of Y/N's nose nuzzled at the stretch of his neck, soothing him, and he relaxed into the touch. “Okay?” she asked, which was unnecessary. Of course it’s ‘okay’. It’s _better_ than ‘okay’ _._

Sherlock nodded fervently, unable to help wriggling against the reassuring weight of Y/N's hand experimentally, a low, strangled groan rising from somewhere deep inside his lungs.

It took him a little while to find his voice, and when he did it was embarrassingly uneven. "But what about...what about you?"

Yes, what about Y/N? Why should _he_ get to have all the fun? After all, hadn't each of his countless daydreams about their first night together involved Y/N being doted on just as much, if not more than himself? Had he not spent almost every night thinking up dozens of imaginative ways to try and show her just how much he loves her? All those plans...

Washed away, because one touch, one brush if his hip, his stomach, down _lower_ and he'd melted all over the mattress. 

He could never hope to give her any kind of pleasure in this state. He probably couldn't even stand up if he tried. He's enjoying this way more than he thought he would, if that's possible. 

"Don't worry about me." Y/N kissed him again, finding his mouth already open, wide and desperate and ravenous. "There will be plenty of time for me." 

There will be. They're dating now, some distant part of Sherlock's brain realises, dulled and vague, like he's watching his thoughts happen through a fogged-up window. The corner of his lip quirked.

At that moment, Y/N released him, and he whimpered plaintively in protest, his eyes snapping open to blink at her pleadingly. Y/N just smirked wickedly. "Lift your hips." Her mouth is so close to Sherlock’s ear he can feel her words slip into it and slide about his brain. They're winding around each neuron, gumming them up in sweet syrup---

And he doesn't even care.

He obeyed, as best he could with every muscle as soft as jam, allowing Y/N to drag his underwear free of his waist. Heat prickled over her skin, and he groaned at that slight brush of friction, the emphatic statement of his erection springing free.

Sherlock felt rather than saw Y/N grin. "How the _fuck_ were you still single?" She asked, a low lover's purr, and he preened.

 _'Were',_ single. _'Were'._ He's not single anymore, he's Y/N's.

She took the impressive length of him in one hand again, the other by his head still running the ridges of her nails over his scalp. He's never had to concentrate on respiration before, but he is now, sucking fresh oxygen into his lungs, having to remind himself to expel the old. 

Y/N just held him for a bit, letting him get used to it (or teasing him---probably both) and he felt himself filling her hand. The firm, sweet pressure is torturous, and he tried to shift his hips, to push further into Y/N's grip, but it just rose and fell with him, her mouth silencing his little tormented whine. 

Can one die of lust? 

She asked something like 'Okay?' again, but got no response, besides a few breathy gasps. They answered her question all the same, and, sensing his need (or wanting to hear more of those sounds he makes so beautifully) Y/N finally gave him a brush of friction. Just a simple stroke, down to the base of his cock and then back up again, right to the painfully sensitive tip.

Sherlock gave a breathless little sob. 

"Nice?" Y/N asked, and now he knew she was playing with him. She has the power to turn the great Sherlock Holmes into a quivering mess---he’s so _new_ to it all--- _obviously_ she's going to play with him. He’s like a toy she'd just taken out of the wrapping. 

"You _know_ it's nice." He swallowed heavily, voice so guttural Y/N barely recognised it. It's like his throat is a road that's just been repaved with gravel. "Do it again."

She did, a long, tormentingly slow motion, pre-cum already making the movement slick and smooth. Sherlock's breaths became gasps, which Y/N swallowed, kissing him, delving so deep it stirred his blood. It's overwhelming, each brush of her tongue against the roof of his mouth, the firm pads of her lips, the hand in his curls, the _other_ hand up and down and _speeding up---_

She broke the kiss, pulling away so she could enjoy his expression; halfway between agony and abandon. Each of Sherlock's unbridled groans sent vibrations throughout every single one of Y/N’s atoms, his cheeks hot and body working up a sweat despite the fact that he's just _laying_ there---kind of writhing as he squirmed under Y/N's (very welcomed) assault. No one's ever touched him like this, and it shows. 

It's different when the hand is not his own, Sherlock would later contemplate. Nothing compares to that touch belonging to someone else, the firm, unpredictable intensity of Y/N’s hand, uncontrollable and unanticipated. The sensation is almost too much, and he gives a frantic mewl as Y/N’s hold tightens, her hand continuing its rhythm. She's caressing him with long, easy strokes, every sinewy muscle Sherlock owns tensing in anticipation as that familiar, sharp promise of orgasm coils about his belly, hovering just out of reach. He hunted it out, trying desperately to push himself further, faster, into Y/N’s hand, his body moving entirely beyond his control as his eyes squeezed tight shut in pleasure. 

  
  
  


…

  
  
  


Y/N brushing the pad of her thumb over the tip of him is what sent him over the edge.

His back bent into a lithe arch as he fell to pieces, rutting up into Y/N's grip with a cry so loud the whole of London shook. 

  
  
  


…

  
  
  
  


Y/N cleaned up with a Kleenex plucked from the bedside table, then tossed it in the general direction of the waste paper basket, Sherlock watching her lazily with a soft, sated expression, his mouth spread wide in a floppy grin. 

“So,” Y/N asked through a smile as she flopped back onto the mattress. “Did you enjoy yourself?” 

His colour high, Sherlock moved closer and lifted his slightly limp body as best he could, ensconcing himself under Y/N’s arm. “Immensely.” The point of his nose nudged Y/N’s jaw as he settled his head on her chest, one leg moving over to keep her tight against his pelvis. He sighed, and it pooled on her chest, one hand finding the mound one of Y/N’s breasts and it settled there, just because it could. 

He’s quite heavy, even with only half of his six-foot frame using Y/N as a body pillow. A good heavy, the best kind of heavy, reassuring and soft and alive. His skin is pale as marble and yet he is very warm. Hot, even, his heartbeat still flurrying happily against Y/N’s skin. Some small part of her considered teasing him for his love of being held---

But she decided against it, and let her cheek lean against the crown instead, a curl brushing her bottom lip. Of course he likes to be held. It's a form of affection; something of which he has been horribly starved. 

Several moments of contented silence drift by, warm like a blanket cocooning them in their own little world. Sherlock's room is so quiet, nestled snugly at the back of the building, the sound of cars crawling down Baker Street muted and distant. Simultaneously, Y/N and Sherlock's minds (her's content, his wonderfully spent) wondered whose bedroom they'd spend their nights for the foreseeable future, and if they'd have to get used to hearing or not hearing the bustling London traffic.

Sherlock liked the idea of crawling into Y/N's bed very much, surrounded by her scent and belongings and things that makes him think of her.

Y/N doesn't mind where they sleep, so long as Sherlock's hair is close enough to bury her hand in.

A siren went off somewhere in the distance---a concrete jungle's version of a bird call---and downstairs Mrs Hudson's phone rang. She still uses the landline, a decrepit old machine hanging from a hook on the wall, cracks in the cable exposing brittle wires. A dog barked. Someone honked a horn, no doubt a moody taxi driver chastising a clueless cyclist for failing to check for traffic before pulling away from a junction. 

Isn't it interesting how life can just carry on, the world completely unaware that somewhere, two people's lives had changed in ways that will completely alter their entire existence? 

Y/N was concentrating on stroking the pad of one finger over each bump of Sherlock's spine when he fidgeted experimentally against her body.

His head suddenly jerked up, and he propped himself on one elbow. "Could you do it again?"

Y/N blinked at him, still in shock from the sudden disturbance of the peace. “What? Right now?”

A small flush suffused the angular dash of his cheekbones, and a quick glance downwards gave away that---never having fully settled down to begin with----he was indeed already eager to be touched again. “If you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind.” 

He gave a little pleased sound and Y/N moved to push him back onto the bed, but this time he beat her to it, nudging her legs apart with his knee and pinning her to the mattress. She looked into his face curiously, a smirk twitching the corner of her lips. “What are you doing?” 

Sherlock dipped his head to give Y/N the kind of kiss _she’d_ given _him_ only minutes before, one that dove so deep it brushed the fringes of her soul. 

Her toes curled, both legs sliding up to entwine about Sherlock’s calves, and she felt the vibrations of his chuckle at her eagerness. 

He likes the effect he has on her. It seems to excite him just as much as her touch; the curve of Y/N’s cheeks a hot pink, her breath coming quick and fast through the exhilarated smile of scarlet, kiss-stained lips. “This time,” he delivered the words right into her ear, his rumbling baritone drowning her in honey, “I want to participate.” 

Y/N swallowed, one hand finding his hair, not to pet, but to clutch onto (although it made him moan all the same) as his hand took her other one and slipped down the narrow, humid gap between their bare bodies. 

Tentatively: “Show me how.” The ridge of his teeth caught her ear, giving it a playful nip. “Show me what you like.”

Moving her palm to rest atop his, Y/N kissed at the sensitive skin of his neck, her fingers tightening on his curls as he neared that bundle of nerves between her legs. They throbbed, every cell alive with a gnawing, fierce ache. It wouldn’t take much. “You’re an artist,” she breathed. 

Another kiss. 

Another little moan on Sherlock’s part. 

“Get creative.” 

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
